By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, 10.11.2007 (IANS): Millions of tonnes of waste plastic will be recycled into steel. The breakthrough Australian “green” steel technology which cuts coke and coal demand and reduces emissions has been invented by University of New South Wales materials scientist Professor Veena Sahajwalla.
Sahajwalla, an alumni of Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, told IANS “Plastic is simply another form of carbon. In making steel there’s essentially no difference between the polyethylene plastic in shopping bags and a natural resource like coal.”
Polyethylene plastic contains carbon, an essential raw material in electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking, which recycles steel from scrap metal and accounts for 40 per cent of the world’s steel production. Annual steel production is around 1.1 billion tonnes globally.