From port and terminal projects to giant cranes, ArcelorMittal crane rails are used in many applications and can be found in ports on all continents.

ArcelorMittal Europe - Long Products contributed to new terminal project in the capital city of Colombo in Sri Lanka by supplying MRS87A grade 90 crane rails from its Rails & Special Sections mill in Rodange, Luxembourg. These rails have a high protection coating (level C5) to protect them against corrosion, achieving the desired level of protection and maintaining their specifications.

Complete solutions to meet customers’ requirements

China's Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company (ZPMC) Ltd has won the tender to supply 12 giant cranes and 40 rail mounted automatic gantry cranes for the new port. As a result, ArcelorMittal also supplied A75 crane rails to equip the ZPMC's STS cranes used for the terminal.

ArcelorMittal is a key supplier and partner for this project thanks to our ability to offer complete solutions across our product range and steel grades. "This was possible thanks to the great collaboration between the mill and the commercial teams, which enabled us to achieve good results and meet the customer’s requirements," concludes Frédéric Goujon, ArcelorMittal Product manager for crane, grooved, and light rails.

ArcelorMittal works closely with its customers to develop new or specific rails and products according to their needs, while maintaining a high degree of production flexibility.

New container terminal for Colombo Port

Colombo is Sri Lanka's largest port and handles 90% of the country's maritime cargo, making it an important container port on the East-West maritime route in South Asia.

The new East Container Terminal (ECT) at Colombo Port will feature a 1320-metre-long, 75-hectare container yard, including the connected services needed to operate as a modern container terminal. The entire project is scheduled for completion in 2025.

A road network has been designed to ensure efficient traffic flow for warehouse operations and rail loading. The marshalling area has been designed with a container stacking facility with wagon loading and unloading facilities. Once established, this will serve as an interchange point between road and rail to serve the terminals in the port of Colombo.

Text:
ArcelorMittal Europe Communications
Constructalia

Images:
© Sri Lanka Ports Authority
© Shutterstock.com/Nandana Rathnayaka

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Colombo Port

The benefits that steel sheet pile solutions bring to sustainable port infrastructure are increasing steadily with the evolution of steel grades, weight reduction, corrosion protection, recyclability, and environmental impact reduction.

Technological advances

Steel sheet piles have been used in ports for the execution of quay walls for almost 100 years. They replaced wooden piles due to the lack in the supply of wood by the end of the 19th century.

Since then, numerous quay walls, jetties and breakwaters around the globe have been built with steel sheet piles. The evolution of the shapes of the profiles combined with the improvement of the steel grades made it possible to design increasingly deeper maritime structures in response to the increase of the size of the vessels.

Research and development contributed to lowering the environmental impact of the steel in several ways. Firstly, by reducing the quantity of steel required to build equivalent structures, and secondly by developing new production routes that recycle steel.

Durability is an important criterion of sustainability, and one of the major challenges for maritime structures. Steel and reinforced concrete are both affected by this harsh environment. The construction industry is looking for new innovative solutions to increase service life and reduce maintenance costs during the entire life-cycle.

The second aspect in sustainability is the environment. Financial considerations will always be a key parameter in the choice of the technical solution, but the world is changing, and in the last years, environmental aspects are gaining more and more importance in the complex decision-making process.

The inexorable advance in rolling techniques, along with the development of more efficient driving techniques pushed steel sheet manufacturers to improve the effectiveness of their products, the aim being to outperform competitors. For instance, the reduction in weight between different generations of Z-type sheet pile sections with the same section modulus is significant: the new AZ®-800, launched in 2015, is more than 25% lighter than an equivalent BZ section from the 1950s.

Similarly, the high section modulus HZ®-M steel wall system was launched in 2008 and beats the old HZ system from the 1970s by at least 10% in weight. Its maximum resistance (maximum section modulus) was more than doubled.

Additionally, taking into account the increase of up to 30% in yield strength of current steel grades, the mass of steel required to build exactly the same sheet pile structure has decreased in the last decades by more than 50%!

Corrosion protection

Corrosion is one the key parameters for the optimisation of a steel structure in a marine environment. It is quite difficult to estimate a reduction of thickness of a steel element in seawater because many parameters influence the corrosion phenomenon. These parameters can also vary during the service life of the structure. To improve the durability, new steel grades emerged in the last years specifically for marine applications. Based on more than 15 years of exposure of steel samples in seawater in a UK port, measured corrosion rates of steel grade AMLoCor® in the low water zone and in the permanent immersion zone are up to 5 times smaller than the ones of standard carbon steel.

AMLoCor has been granted a German national technical agreement, so that even if it contains more alloys than a standard steel used in construction, it can be designed according to the international design standards for steel. For instance, approximately 4000 tonnes of steel sheet piles in AMLoCor were installed in the new Unitterminal in the Port of Koege, Denmark in 2016.

Reduced corrosion rates can lead to lighter sheet pile sections, and can avoid the need for coatings. This is a typical win-win situation for the environment.

Recyclability, EPDs, and LCAs

Steel is durable and resistant, but it has another outstanding property: steel can be recycled over and over again. Recycling preserves natural resources, and hence contributes to a more sustainable world. Steel is an environmentally-friendly material, and 100% of the steel in any structure can be recovered and recycled.

The challenge in port construction is that old structures are not always dismantled, but in a few decades, recovering the different construction materials for further processing, preferably recycling, will be a natural thought for every project owner. The building industry already takes into account environmental criteria, for instance in the certification of ‘green’ buildings (labels such as LEED, BREEAM, etc.). It is noteworthy that some European administrations already implement sustainable criteria in their tenders of public works, based on the ‘Directive 2014/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2014 on public procurement’. One method is to monetise the different sustainable criteria, for instance by giving credits based on an LCA (environmentally-friendly materials get more credits).

The difficulty in comparing alternative solutions from an environmental point of view is the lack of reliable information about the environmental impacts of each material. The effects of installation, its use phase, and after its service life - the recycling - are not easy to calculate. The main contributors of a structure to the environmental impact shall be analysed through a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) according to ISO standards, taking into account every phase of the structure, including the recycling of the material.

An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for a specific product (specific use) simplifies such comparisons. It consists of an LCA using data provided by one or more production mills (steel mills and rolling mills) for specific products. Assumptions on reuse and recycling rates depend on the utilisation of the products. Steel sheet piles can be reused several times, for temporary applications, but most of them are used in permanent structures for a service life ranging from 30 up to 100 years. Some modules, such as production from cradle-to-gate (modules A1 to A3 from EN 15804) are mandatory. Others are left to the choice of the manufacturer.

ArcelorMittal leads the way by being the first manufacturer of steel sheet piles to have published a peer-reviewed EPD according to the latest ISO and EN standards for steel products in 2016, and a more specific EPD for EcoSheetPiles™, which are sheet piles manufactured exclusively out of scrap through an electric arc furnace (EAF) route, in June 2018.

The next step in the industry should be the development of more user-friendly tools and calculators to perform the comparison of LCAs with different materials. It is important to mention that LCA’s should compare alternatives for the same functional unit.

LCAs performed by ArcelorMittal in the past have shown that for a couple of quay wall configurations, steel has a lower environmental footprint than alternative materials, provided that steel elements are recovered and recycled after the service life of the structure.

As an example, the below chart shows a simplified LCA for the parameter ‘Global Warming Potential’ (CO2) using realistic assumptions for a project in Denmark where 2235 t of sheet piles manufactured in Belval, Luxembourg were transported by rail to Antwerp, Belgium (around 328 km) and then by vessel to Kalundborg, Denmark (around 1285 km). There can be huge differences between the EPDs and assumptions made in an LCA for a specific project. Clearly, transport has a very small impact on the overall carbon footprint of the solution. Installation, maintenance and dismantling can most of the time also be neglected (not represented on the graph). The following graph is based on a recycling rate of 99% of steel and no reuse.

The key parameter is undoubtedly the reuse and recycling rate. The electric arc furnace route (EAF) significantly reduces the environmental impact of a sheet pile solution. Module D takes into account the influence of reuse and recycling of steel, but since it is not mandatory to declare it, some authorities do not consider it in the LCA. In our opinion, module D should always be considered, which is now the case for the European EN 15804-A2 standard of 2019.

Contributing to the circular economy

Finally, a fashionable expression nowadays is circular economy, which encompasses the reuse of products and materials, consequently reducing the waste of natural resources. Steel sheet piles have been a precursor because they can be reused several times for temporary excavations before being scrapped and are sometimes even reused in permanent structures. We have seen steel sheet piles that have been used up to 10 times. Rental of steel sheet piles contributes also to the circular economy (reuse).

Sustainability is a key goal for new port infrastructures in the future. It will be a challenge, for sure, and innovative steel solutions can definitely contribute to the achievement of this crucial goal.

Text:
João Martins, ArcelorMittal Sheet Piling (VII Congreso Nacional de la Asociación Técnica de Puertos y Costas, 2019)
Constructalia (introduction, headings)

Images:
© ArcelorMittal Sheet Piling

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Source

Just as the fluffy white clouds gleam in the blue autumn sky, so does Granite® HDXtreme steel in G906S White aluminium or G910S Pure white – two of the many samples available on Constructalia.

Free samples to make any project unique

Order these free samples, along with many others for the construction market, from Constructalia here.

Created in consultation with architects and designers, Granite® HDXtreme from ArcelorMittal Europe – Flat Products is available in a vast palette of colours and three different finishes to make any project unique.

Text:
Constructalia

Images:
ArcelorMittal Europe
Constructalia

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The longevity of solar installations is directly dependent on the quality of the materials used to build them. Today, renewable energy producers expect their solar investments to have a productive lifetime of 25 years or longer. When it comes to selecting materials for the support structures for PV panels, factors such as low maintenance costs and ensuring the structural stability of the installation drive material choices. For the past ten years there has been a standout choice: Magnelis® from ArcelorMittal Europe – Flat Products.

Magnelis®: third-party verified

This unique coating has been widely adopted and proven in the field. Today, Magnelis® also comes with a variety of third-party certifications. France’s Scientific and Technical Centre for Building (CSTB) has recently renewed its certification.

In the decade since Magnelis® was introduced, there have been significant improvements to the range. These include heavier coatings which are extending the geographic range of solar projects to more aggressive environments while offering longer lifetimes. The heavier coatings are also allowing Magnelis® to be used for foundation poles which are rammed into the soil, replacing post-galvanised material.

“Magnelis® is a pre-coated steel solution which has significant advantages over galvanised and post-galvanised material,” explains Jérôme Guth, Solar Segment Manager for ArcelorMittal Europe – Flat Products. “The coating process is controlled online and is fully traceable. Magnelis® can be formed, perforated, and assembled using standard tools. Magnelis® avoids post-galvanising operations and reduces raw material and energy use, labour, and storage and transportation costs. Magnelis® also exhibits a self-healing effect when exposed to the atmosphere,” bringing cut edge protection to a new level. “The corrosion protection products in Magnelis® progressively migrate to the edges of holes or scratches to maintain corrosion protection,” notes Jérôme Guth.

Magnelis® is applied to a wide range of steel substrates, including ArcelorMittal’s S550GD-HyPer® steel grade. This grade is increasingly used by structural engineers to optimise the design of solar structures and increase the loads they can bear.

XCarb® recycled and renewably produced steel: a lower carbon footprint for solar structures

Solar mounting structures can now have a lower carbon footprint when using steel substrates produced via the XCarb® recycled and renewably produced route. Once the substrate is produced, it is coated with Magnelis®.

XCarb® recycled and renewably produced steels are created in an electric arc furnace (EAF) using a minimum of 75% of scrap and 100% renewable electricity, resulting in a product with 70% less carbon than steel produced using conventional blast furnace technology. This is a major saving and enhances the credentials of renewable energy.

Alusín Solar, a Spanish company which supplies structures for solar panels, recently signed an agreement to purchase ArcelorMittal’s XCarb® recycled and renewably produced steel with Magnelis® coating. A key factor in Alusín Solar’s decision to purchase Magnelis® has been the development of a tailored made 15-year ArcelorMittal guarantee for foundation poles in soil.

Coating weights and feasibility extended

From September 2023, ArcelorMittal’s plant in Aviles, Spain will be able to produce Magnelis® in thicknesses of up to 3.5 mm on its recently revamped galvanising line 1. This will increase the availability of Magnelis® in the south of Europe and brings the total number of lines producing Magnelis® across Europe to five.

Magnelis® in heavier coating weights can be used in soils and concrete. Magnelis® ZM620 (indicative coating thickness of 50 μm per side) is already available in thicknesses up to 4.0 mm. “Magnelis® ZM800 (indicative coating thickness of 65 μm per side) is also available for testing in thicknesses up to 3.0 mm,” notes Jérôme Guth. “We are actively looking for partners who would like to implement our thicker coatings, up to ZM800 on request, in their future solar projects. You will achieve longer lifetimes for your solar installations, backed by an ArcelorMittal guarantee. Get in touch with your regular ArcelorMittal contact person to take part.”

Text:
ArcelorMittal Europe Communications

Images:
Profil du Futur
Maxshot.PL/Shutterstock.com
ArcelorMittal

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Bruynzeel Storage Systems is a leading provider of made-to-measure storage solutions for archives, museums, retail, offices, libraries, smart warehouses, healthcare, and vertical farming. The company is a leader in sustainability, having already achieved climate neutral status in its own operations for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. The next step is to decarbonise the company’s operations fully by achieving net-zero indirect emissions. Bruynzeel has set itself the goal of achieving this target by 2045 at the latest. To help Bruynzeel on that journey, the company has begun to purchase ArcelorMittal steels with XCarb® green steel certificates.

“At Bruynzeel Storage Systems, we want to be the leader in our sector when it comes to enhancing the sustainability of our business,” says Bart Sijben, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the company. “With that in mind, we have already taken action to create a climate-neutral factory. That has reduced our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions to zero. Now we are working to decarbonise our indirect – Scope 3 – emissions.”

Steel's flexibility is key

Most of Bruynzeel’s storage solutions are made with steel due to the flexibility of the material. “Steel is easy to shape and form into the required dimensions and shapes, but it does have a big impact on the carbon footprint of the business,” notes Bart Sijben. “Our goal is to cut our Scope 3 emissions to zero by 2045. We believe that XCarb® green steel certificates are the best solution available today to help us achieve that goal.”

Ultimately the choice of steel is up to the final customer. “We mainly use unoiled cold rolled steel to create our storage solutions,” explains Bart Sijben. “We also use Magnelis®. It is the perfect choice for applications when we want to avoid pure-zinc coatings. Zinc is not the best corrosion protection solution in indoor projects for a range of sustainability, environmental, and recycling reasons.”

Giving customers the facts

To help customers make a choice, Bruynzeel can provide quotes which detail the environmental impact of the raw materials used in its products. “We can quote for solutions with and without XCarb® green steel certificates, but the quotes show the environmental impact of each option,” explains Marius Schlatmann, Group Marketing Manager for Bruynzeel.

Providing customers with fact-based, independently verified data is critical explains Marius Schlatmann: “We are careful to use the right protocols and reporting language in our communications, and we expect our suppliers to do the same. The fact that ArcelorMittal’s certificates are independently verified is very important to us. Our own Scope 1 and 2 reductions have been audited by Deloitte.”

Around two-thirds of the customers who opt for steel with XCarb® green steel certificates are organisations which rely partly or fully on public funding notes Bart Sijben: “Publicly funded organisations are taking the lead. The National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom is a good example. They now ask suppliers about their sustainability initiatives – and those of their suppliers. It is becoming increasingly important to all organisations, but particularly those that are active in the public sector.”

Supporting ArcelorMittal’s journey to net-zero

In the future, Bruynzeel wants to be the first customer to use ArcelorMittal steel produced with low-carbon technology. Until then they are supporting ArcelorMittal on its journey to zero emissions by buying XCarb^® green steel certificates with their orders.

“While ArcelorMittal is developing its low-carbon technologies, we will continue to support the steelmaker on its own journey to net-zero,” says Bart Sijben. “ArcelorMittal is the market leader and produces high quality products. We also appreciate their excellent service and short lead-time offer. We feel closely linked. ArcelorMittal has the same culture as Bruynzeel despite ArcelorMittal being a large organisation.”

About Bruynzeel Storage Systems Systems BV

Bruynzeel was founded in 1897 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Initially, the company produced wooden shelving systems for a range of applications. In 1970, Bruynzeel produced its first mobile shelving systems made from steel. Today the company is the market leader in Europe for innovative and space creating solutions. Its mission is to help companies and institutions reduce their CO₂ footprint by using Bruynzeel space creating solutions.

More information: Bruynzeel Storage Systems

Text:
ArcelorMittal Europe Communications
Constructalia

Images:
© Bruynzeel

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