This collaborative, cross sector R&D demonstration project furthers previous industrial research to advance & showcase novel technology developed to support transformation of Foundation Industry production process optimisation. The primary aim is to increase efficiency to achieve greater productivity by increased energy and resource efficiency. This will be achieved by using advanced robotics integrated with 3D machine vision systems which are augmented with bespoke sensors creating a data rich environment. The robotic, vision and sensory technology will be applied and demonstrated with foundation industry production processes building on previous R&D to digitally inspect defects in metals, glass and ceramics. With additional utilisation of machine learning (ML) on data collected, the advacned artificial intelligence (AI) developed can begin to enhance these traditional Foundation Industry production processes to enabling greater industrial productivity whilst significantly reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions in both glass, metals, and ceramic manufacturing. Current manufacturing methods are inflexible, often requiring the time-intensive pre-programming or manual intervention of production tasks responding to unexpected occurrences or production errors. This means that foundation industries are unable to respond to the demands of future environmental targets and cannot make further improvements within the manufacturing process until the production methods are updated. This is critical to address; success will allow UK manufacturing to remain competitive when facing increasing global competition where labour rates and emissions regulations are significantly lower. This project aims to use advanced 3D vision sensor data to produce ML and AI algorithms to monitor and improve the metals, glass and ceramic production process. To guarantee the repeatability and accuracy of measurement, automation through the flexibility offered by modern multi-axis robotic systems will be demonstrated. The ultimate output of the system will result in foundation industry-wide benefits in glass, ceramics, and metals production. This project will address specific needs in these foundation industries by offering an augmented, existing manufacturing process brought about by digitised inspection & intelligent machine learning. It is anticipated that a reduction in energy costs and improved production yields associated with the manufacture of tempered glass & kiln fired ceramic materials will be significantly and positively impacted, as is the case in the foundry castings industries.

The UK Government is committed to moving to a zero-carbon economy, including within the most energy-intensive sectors. These sectors consume a considerable amount of energy, but also play an essential role in delivering the UK's transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy, as well as in contributing to economic growth and rebalancing the economy. UK Foundation Industries generate 10% of the UK's entire CO2 emissions and for three of these industries, glass, cement and ceramics, manufacture is energy and capital intensive. Future environmental regulations create challenges in competing with new plants from the developing world but also offer new opportunities. COVID-19 impact resulted in near total suspension of foundation industry production. Subsequent recovery is further challenged by new, UK policies and plummeting raw material values which are compounding negative impact to decimated sectors. This energy efficiency industrial research project aims to deliver a transformative new instrument for the glass, cement and ceramics industries, utilising analytical Raman gas measurement instrumentation, originally developed for nuclear decommissioning by project lead IS-Instruments. The data provided by the instrument will enable these Foundation Industries and others, to make a step-change in process control, energy consumption and environmental emissions monitoring. Significant energy savings will be directly enabled through accurate, near-to-real-time hot gas measurement, realising the future potential of mixing natural gas with cleaner energy sources such as hydrogen, when combined with more accurate and near-to-real-time burner in-process control. The optimised environmental monitoring capability of this instrument will enable greater understanding and the value added by additional in-process monitoring technologies will deliver a new technology enabling step changes to prcessing within the foundation industries. To deliver this collaborative, innovative project, IS-Instruments will be supported by UK Foundation Industry partners Glass Technology Services (Glass), Breedon Group (Cement) and Wienerberger (Ceramics) with world class University expertise from Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre and Sheffield Hallam's Materials Engineering Research Institute.

This project will bring together expertise from both the steel and brick making industries to share best practice in the operation of continuous gas fired furnaces and waste heat recovery. The potential for using new furnace technologies and waste heat recovery systems will be explored. The project aims to show where shared best practice, new technologies and improved waste heat use can reduce furnace fuel use and CO2 emissions, reducing operating cost and contributing to the National Energy and Climate plan requirements to reduce industrial CO2 emissions by 20% by 2030\. Results from the project will be disseminated to encourage the take up of improved technologies and waste heat recovery in more than 40 other brick kilns and 20 steel reheat furnaces in the UK. The results may also be applicable to other foundation industries.

The EnviroAsh project brings together partners from across the six Foundation Industries \[Glass (Glass Technology Services, Glassworks Services Ltd, Encirc, Glass Futures Ltd), Ceramics (Wienerberger), Steel (British Steel Ltd), Paper (Saica), Cement (Hanson, Breedon), Chemicals (Power Minerals Ltd. - through its Biolite division, which converts an ash-waste into a fertiliser product)\], the Energy sector (Drax) plus key academic partners (Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) and the University of Sheffield (UoS) and supply-chain partners experienced in handling and processing wastes and raw materials (PML, LKAB Minerals). The project will identify opportunities to take waste ashes, slags, mineral by-products and filter dusts from across the FIs and convert them into new raw materials for a range of products produced within the glass, ceramic and cement Foundation Industry sectors. In exploring an end-to-end approach this project aims to identify routes to convert waste streams into new raw materials transforming disposal costs into opportunities for income generation by creating lower cost raw materials with potential to reduce environmental impacts of Foundation Industry manufacturing processes. The project will also explore how these new feedstocks might create opportunities to improve product performance in a cost-effective manner. The project will deliver practical lab and commercial-scale demonstrations of how these new waste-derived materials can be incorporated into existing products and processes, establishing a consortium, supply chain and new business models which can be applied to other waste streams within the FI and other energy intensive sectors.

To explore new materials for moulds which can enhance the efficiency of the process and increase productivity.

To evaluate current water quantities/qualities used & discharged and develop an integrated water management strategy to reduce water consumption and reliance on mains supply and increase the potential for water recycling and reuse in the plant.