Carnegie Mellon University
August 17, 2015

MSE Undergrads Win 2nd Place in Design Competition

The American Society for Metals (ASM) Materials Education Foundation and the Design Competition Committee have selected an MSE Capstone project to receive the Second Place Award in the 2015 Undergraduate Design Competition. The team members were MSE seniors Kate Groschner, Kellie Painter, Dylan Quintana, and Patrice Daniel with Robert Heard as faculty advisor and ATI, Inc. (formerly know as Allegheny Technologies Incorporated) as industry sponsor. Their project was titled “Recycling of Specialty Metal Plant By-Products.”  As the Second Place winner, the team will receive $1,500 plus up to $500 travel assistance to attend the MS&T'15 Conference in Columbus, Ohio to be held in October 2015.

The team’s project dealt with recycling of several waste streams from stainless steel production that contain nickel and chromium. These are expensive alloying elements added to stainless steels. The first portion of this project dealt with detailed characterization of the waste materials. The second part of the project consisted of designing a method for recovery of valuable elements from these waste streams. This required identification of a cost-effective reductant and binder material. An Excel based system for simulation of the recycling process was developed to compare combinations and from this the optimal methods were identified.