With a distinguished career spanning five decades, Professor Geoff Scamans has been at the forefront of research, innovation, and sustainability within the aluminium industry. Still a key figure in the industry, Geoff is dedicated to his role as Chief Scientific Officer at Innoval Technology, as well as being the Professor of Metallurgy at BCAST, Brunel University London. His extensive contributions, ranging from corrosion studies to advancing circular economy principles, have shaped the industry’s evolution. In this exclusive interview, Prof. Scamans reflects on his journey, key breakthroughs, and the future of aluminium technology and what he hopes his legacy to be as the UK aluminium industry progresses.
- So, looking back on your five-decade career in the aluminium industry, what initially drew you to this field, and what has kept you engaged for so long?
After completing a metallurgy degree and PhD at Imperial College I worked for a year on a post-doctoral contract to study the role of hydrogen in the stress corrosion cracking of high strength aluminium alloys. This resulted in my being employed by Alcan at their Banbury Research Laboratories in November 1974 as they were interested in following this line of research to support aluminium alloy plate production at Kitts Green in Birmingham. This continued until the early 1980’s when there was a major change in emphasis to new opportunities for aluminium in transport and energy applications and the beginnings of sustainability and environmental concerns for the aluminium industry.
- What do you consider to be your most significant achievements or contributions to the aluminium industry, whether in research, innovation, or sustainability?
I was lucky to be around during the early days of the UK’s major investment in high voltage electron microscopes and in-situ reaction cells that provided detailed insights into the mechanisms of oxidation and corrosion of aluminium alloys that enabled me to establish a strong track record of publications and to develop a strong network of international collaborations that persist to this day. This opened the door to a long R&D career and multiple collaborative projects each with their own challenges and technology developments that have encouraged and expanded the use of aluminium in construction and transport applications. I have also had the opportunity to involved in determining the cause of failure of aluminium planes, boats and trains in a series of legal battles.
- Over the last 50 years, what have been the most groundbreaking innovations you’ve seen in aluminium processing, recycling, or applications that have transformed the industry?
The most creative and innovative time initiated from the challenge to view aluminium corrosion as a positive rather than a negative attribute. This became “surface engineering of aluminium” that supported the development of durable adhesive bonding for aluminium automotive body sheet first to make six Austin Metros with technology that is now used to build more than 1.5 million vehicles/year including the Ford F150. Other projects included aluminium-air batteries, aluminium membranes based on stripped anodic films that introduced Alcan to the world of biotechnology and indirectly resulted in the purchase of both a high-performance electric motor company, Uniq mobility in Denver, and the brief ownership of a lithium battery company Moli Energy in Vancouver. However, none of these projects resulted in significant business develops for Alcan or the aluminium industry.
The new technology phase was swiftly followed by a return to core business, and I had the opportunity to secure EU funding for a collaborative R&D project to control the filiform corrosion resistance of aluminium rolled products. This resulted in a detailed understanding of deformed surface layers on all rolled aluminium sheet and their control both corrosion under coatings and the durability of adhesive bonds and valuable insight into the cleaning and pretreatment of aluminium surfaces. This work has had major ramifications for all aspects of aluminium surface treatment and corrosion control. The EU project was the first of multiple collaborative R&D proposals that have enabled a wide variety of innovations for the aluminium industry over the years.
- How have you seen the use of aluminium evolve across industries like automotive, aerospace, and packaging, and what do you think has been the most impactful application?
Aluminium remains underexploited in automotive applications although it is now holding its own in aerospace applications and is a major force in the world of single use drink packaging. Aluminium beverage cans have probably been the most impactful application and largest revenue generator for the aluminium industry to date. This application points the way for aluminium to be considered in future where sustainability and circular economy considerations are vital. Circular Economy thinking requires all aluminium to be used in the most efficient way, to have the longest possible life in all applications and to have that life extended as many times as possible and only then to be recycled and is the cornerstone of the work at BCAST at Brunel University. Primary aluminium should only be considered to top up loss from the circle or for new or expanding applications. This will eventually turn the aluminium industry on its head with the secondary industry being more important than the primary industry.
- As you reflect on your career, what do you hope your legacy will be in the aluminium industry? And looking ahead, what do you see as the next big challenge or opportunity for aluminium technology?
Aluminium can change from being a major consumer of the world’s energy reserves and a major carbon emitter, polluter and source of red-mud and spent pot-line waste to being a Circular Economy exemplar metal. However, this challenge, recognised many years ago, has only started to be addressed as the industry is still dominated by primary aluminium production that shows no sign of having peaked yet. Today, far too much of the world’s primary aluminium production is based on fossil fuel burning to make the electricity required by the reduction cells.
Primary aluminium should be made using clean electricity in cells eventually with inert electrodes when this technology matures. Electrolytic technology should be switched to refining secondary aluminium casting alloys using either the solid state technology developed in Japan, or the ASTREA process developed in the US by Arconic. This is critical to avoid the so called “dead” aluminium scrap from the switch to electric vehicles that arises from all the aluminium secondary casting alloys used in the present vehicle fleet. It has been estimated that the this could arise to about 9 million tonnes of secondary casting alloy scrap by 2040. There is also the opportunity for rechargeable aluminium-ion batteries to be developed and exploited as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries without supply chain issues.
The challenge for the UK is to make this transition and to develop the aluminium manufacturing capacity to make aluminium rolled, extruded and cast products required for transport, construction and packaging applications using the end-of-life and manufacturing scrap available in the UK that is mainly exported today due to lack of this capability. This is why I am still working and supporting the ambitions of companies like BACALL, Constellium and EMR who are leading the drive for new UK manufacturing capability for aluminium. This has become of paramount importance for UK manufacturing as world trade shifts to carbon taxes, protectionism, and tariffs.
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