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MATERIALS FOR THE FUTURE
In the past decades, steel has been a driver in reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions through enabling weight reduction (increased strength), extending lifetime (improved corrosion resistance and wearability), optimising operating conditions (higher creep resistance, allowing higher operating temperatures in electricity generation), etc. As one of the leading product development labs, OCAS has been involved in the conception and industrial upscaling of the various steel grades and coatings enabling those environmental improvements. Of course, we continue to develop steel grades with further improved performance while
the steel industry is unfolding plans to move towards net zero CO2 emission steel making. A first important driver is the further development of new generations of high strength steels, with a focus on both pushing known metallurgies such as high strength low alloy steels or martensites to the ultimate limit of their performance, as well as enabling the industrialisation of exciting new metallurgical concepts such as high Mn austenitic or intermetallic precipitation strengthened steels. Another enabler to further push the lifetime of a steel component is to optimise its protective coating. Driven by the enormous success of the Magnelis® new high
