The Center for Process Innovation (CPI) and Tata Steel started work to establish the national research facility after signing a Memorandum of Understanding last October. A recently appointed management team placed orders for specialist equipment for the new facility, which will advance high-temperature technologies. Orders have been placed for the pilot-scale industrial plant – a gasifier and a pyrolysis unit. The facility is being built at Tata Steel’s Teesside Technology Center in Grangetown, Middlesbrough, and is scheduled to open next spring.

The equipment will be housed in an open-access facility available to companies wanting to test or develop high-temperature processes and will enable testing and demonstration of technologies developed in the laboratory to prove they can work on a commercial scale. Facilities are also available to test the effectiveness of a wide range of materials in the gasification and pyrolysis processes. Engineers at the plant will pioneer new ways of turning waste products into fuels and raw materials crucial for industries such as energy generation, construction and steel.