Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST) takes an innovative approach to sustainable production to revolutionise the metal industry.
The metals industry provides essential building blocks for our modern world, but it comes with a hefty environmental cost – the extraction of metals accounts for 12% of global CO₂ emissions. Metals are essential for many industries, including construction, automotive, aerospace, electronics, and manufacturing. They are used to build everything from skyscrapers and bridges to cars, aeroplanes, and smartphones. But traditional metal production methods are resource-heavy and pollute the environment, relying on mining and processing raw materials.
We desperately need more sustainable practices to meet the growing global demand for metals. The Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology is leading the way in making the metals industry greener and cleaner through innovative research and the principles of circular economy.
A vision of full metal circulation
Our hunger for new metals is pushing our planet to its limits. The fossil-fuel-reliant extraction and refining processes release large amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Environmentally destructive mining operations lead to deforestation, disturbances to ecosystems, soil erosion, and water pollution.
This is where BCAST comes in. The standalone specialist research centre focuses on metallurgy – studying the production, structure and properties of metallic materials, especially aluminium and magnesium alloys. Their work includes fundamental research, alloy development, process technology development, and industrial application.
The Centre’s research is underpinned by a vision of making the metals industry circular. In a , we keep resources in use for as long as possible, rather than taking materials from the earth, using them once and then discarding them in landfill. A circular economy in the metal industry means reusing, remanufacturing, and recycling metals to reduce the need for new raw materials.
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The Centre’s research aims to make the metal industry circular using three principles:
- Closing the loop: recycling metals
- Narrowing the loop: using fewer primary metals, produced directly from mined ores
- Slowing the loop: using metallic materials longer
BCAST’s vision is a transformed metal industry, which moves from the energy-intensive and polluting mining of primary metals to using energy-efficient and sustainable secondary metals produced by melting down and refining scrap metals.
“In the UK we import all (about a million tonnes) of the aluminium we use for high-value manufacturing as expensive primary metal. On the other hand, we generate a similar amount of scrap and export it at low prices. That scrap could be a source of low-carbon secondary material, so there is an opportunity to provide a sustainable and secure aluminium resource with an economic benefit.”
Ian Stone, BCAST Operations Director
The BCAST research community is driven by a shared goal of ‘full metal circulation’ - to decouple economic growth from the environmental damage it currently causes and deliver an environmentally and economically sustainable metal industry.
Two decades of pioneering metallurgical research
Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology was first established in October 2002 with just a handful of staff and PhD students. Over the course of 22 years, it has grown in number to almost 100 personnel plus more than 50 seconded industrial research engineers and is now the dominant research group in its field in the UK and one of the largest of its kind in the world. The Centre is equipped with a range of state-of-the-art research facilities, from analytical instruments to full industrial-scale metal processes. This allows BCAST researchers to work across the full range of metallurgical innovation and research, from studying metals at the atomic level all the way through to prototyping full-scale components for industrial partnerships, such as crash management systems for cars.
“Our aim is for the global demand for metals – from our phones to our cars, from our wind turbines to our buildings – to be met through reuse, remanufacture, recycling, recovery and refining of metals. For more than two decades, BCAST has been working extensively with industry partners to develop lightweight alloys from recycled metals, to establish environmentally friendly metal processing solutions, and to improve their competitiveness in global markets. Being a leader in this new centre will help us realise this aim sooner, by helping other countries accelerate their own journeys towards a circular economy for metals.”
Professor Zhongyun Fan, Director of BCAST
BCAST’s research focuses on three main areas
- Solidification science: studying how metals form solid structures from their liquid state. BCAST researchers want to control how the metal’s microstructure forms, which allows them to create metals with better properties that are easier to recycle.
- Technological development: creating high-performance metal parts directly from liquid metal, reducing the need for further processing. This approach saves energy, time, and costs, and could revolutionise the metal processing industry by making it more efficient.
- Sustainable metallurgical industry: recycling and reusing existing metals more efficiently, reducing the need to extract new metals from the earth. This will help conserve natural resources and energy, making the metal industry more sustainable in the long run.
Partnering with industry to develop lighter cars and new metal-casting technologies
The work taking place at Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Research (BCAST) has already made significant strides towards a more sustainable metal industry.The Centre’s sought-after expertise has been harnessed to:
The Centre’s work spans the metal industry, from partnering with global metal suppliers (such as and ) and suppliers of metal components (such as and ) to collaborating with end users and manufacturers, such as the automotive and aerospace industries.
"We work with businesses in a range of ways: small projects to support SMEs, supporting larger industry-lead collaborative projects such as those funded by Innovate UK, through to major strategic partnerships that encompass multiple concurrent projects, support of PhDs creation of University Technologies and secondment of industrial engineers.”
Ian Stone, BCAST Operations Director
BCAST has partnered with Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo and Mini to develop car components
We work with businesses in a range of ways: small projects to support SMEs, supporting larger industry-lead collaborative projects such as those funded by Innovate UK, through to major strategic partnerships
Constellium has made BCAST the home of one of it鈥檚 own corporate research centres, placing more than 50 staff working side-by-side with BCAST鈥檚 researchers
The key to the Centre’s success, according to Stone and Fan, are its people. BCAST aims to provide a world-class training environment and programme to nurture future leaders in the field who will sustain the legacy of full metal circulation and deliver its long-lasting impact.
By focusing on recycling, remaking, and new technologies, BCAST is changing how we make metals. The Centre’s industrial partnerships and scientific breakthroughs are leading the way towards a greener, more efficient future.
The circular economy principles will be key to meeting future global metal demands. With ongoing innovation and strong collaborations, a sustainable metals industry that helps, rather than harms, our planet is possible.
Learn more about BCAST