'Reducing Hot Metal to Cut Carbon'—Hanyang University and Hyundai Steel Win the UK’s Top Steel Research Paper Award

[Financial News] A Korean university and steelmaker have joined forces to develop a carbon-reduction technology that can be applied at actual steel plants, earning the world’s most prestigious academic award in the field.
Hanyang University ERICA announced on the 11th that a research team led by Professor Park Joo-hyun of the Materials Science and Semiconductor Engineering major and Dr. Kim Kyung-hwan had been selected to receive the Adrian Normanton Medal from the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining (IOM3). The medal is the institute’s most prestigious paper award, presented to a single paper that achieved the strongest academic and technical results among roughly 300 steel-related papers published in international journals over the past two years.
The research team studied a technology that reduces the proportion of freshly tapped hot metal charged into a large vessel known as a converter to cut greenhouse gas emissions from iron production. Using less hot metal can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions generated during steelmaking. The team demonstrated the technology’s effectiveness not only at the laboratory level but also at an actual steel plant, using a large-scale facility with a capacity of 300 tons.
The study is particularly significant because it was driven by an industry practitioner and resulted from cooperation between industry and academia. First author Dr. Kim Kyung-hwan worked as a field engineer at Hyundai Steel for 18 years and earned his doctorate in August under Professor Park’s supervision. Drawing on years of firsthand experience at the plant, he developed a carbon-reduction technology that can be applied directly to actual production processes.
With this award, Professor Park Joo-hyun became the first Korean researcher to win the top paper awards of all three major steel-related academic organizations: The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS), The Iron and Steel Institute of Japan (ISIJ), and the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining (IOM3). Professor Park has also been named to Stanford University’s list of the “World’s Top 2% Scientists” for three consecutive years.
The awards ceremony is scheduled to take place in London, UK, on December 3.

[email protected] Man-gi Kim Reporter