Germany: Research by the FEhS Building Materials Institute has concluded that steel slags are environmentally safe to use as aggregates, even when impurities exceed limit values. The research concluded that slag samples with ‘excessive’ heavy metals content nonetheless released no contaminants when contained in finished concrete.

The institute called for an amendment to MVV technical building specifications to reflect real substance release rather than the amounts of substances contained.

The full report in German is available online here.

US: Eco Material Technologies has opened its 50,000t/yr Blissville rail terminal in New York City. The company says that the terminal will distribute supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), including harvested fly ash, to the New York Metropolitan Area. Precision Terminal Logistics will operate the site, using rail connections including the New York and Atlantic Railway to despatch deliveries. Eco Materials expects the facility to quickly reach full capacity due to ‘strong’ regional demand.

CEO Grant Quasha said that the terminal will help the alternative cement segment to reduce its reliance on imported steel slag as a raw material.

South Korea: Steel company Posco Group has partnered with seven South Korean cement and ready-mix concrete producers and five construction firms, along with the Korea Concrete Institute and the Research Institute of Industrial Science & Technology, to develop novel concretes from slag. The Korea Herald newspaper has reported that Posco Group will supply its slag for the development process.

The project aligns with Posco Group’s ‘super-gap’ future market-orientated innovation strategy.

Ireland: Ecocem has secured €4m in research funding as part of the European Innovation Council’s Pathfinder Challenges 2024 in order to optimise electric arc furnace (EAF) slag for low-carbon cement production. The four-year programme is funded by Horizon Europe and will explore ways to enhance EAF slag reactivity and its suitability as a supplementary cementitious material without compromising cement durability. The project was submitted to the Pathfinder Challenge 2 call: “Towards Cement and Concrete as a Carbon Sink.”

Corporate development executive director Eoin Condren said “For many years, we have been pioneering the use of a range of slags and cementitious materials to create scalable and durable low-carbon cement. Thanks to this grant, we will continue our groundbreaking work as the steel industry transitions to new manufacturing processes, delivering a viable solution for a new generation of waste from steel.”