In six or seven passes under the rollers and jets of water, the bar of molten metal, 25 centimeters thick, flattens and elongates into a long, thin ribbon of steel which will be used to make the Olympic torch. , in the ArcelorMittal rolling mill in Florange, April 4, 2024 (AFP/FREDERICK FLORIN)
In six or seven passes under the rollers and jets of water, the 25 cm thick bar of molten metal flattens and elongates into a long, thin ribbon of steel. A plume of white smoke invades the dark rolling mill.
In the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Florange, in Moselle, the manufacture of steel for the Olympic torch for the Paris 2024 Games served as a challenge for teams more accustomed to large-scale industry – automobiles or construction. – than small series of quasi-goldsmiths.
A single coil of rolled steel from the rolling mill was enough to manufacture the 2,000 torches needed by the torchbearers for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer.
“We prepared like athletes, we had to answer a lot of new technical questions,” Mourad Sedki, quality engineer in Florange, explains to AFP.
“We have no choice, it’s for the climate that we did it too,” adds Aurélie Lemière, an engineer also in Florange, who was selected to carry the flame on one of the stages of the relay in Moselle.
What challenges are they talking about? What is the relationship between the Olympic Games, the flame, a steel group sponsoring the operation, and the evolution of global temperatures?
“The first difficulty was confidentiality. Nothing should leak, the teams should not be aware, so as not to publicize the matter too early, they learned later that a slab (bar, beam) of “Recycled steel, rolled in Florange, was used to make the torches”, says Franck Wasilewski, head of this “unique” project. “No dashboard, nothing in the computer, we prepared everything as a tight team.”
Two Olympic torches which will be used to transport the Olympic flame for the Paris 2024 games, made of recycled steel from the ArcelorMittal rolling mills in Florange, in Moselle, April 4, 2024 (AFP/FREDERICK FLORIN)
But it is still engineers from four different research centers of the group who joined forces to design, produce, test and validate the quality of the steel used, specifies Jean-Luc Thirion, general director of research for the group.
For Games that claim sobriety, the 70 cm high oblong torch is made of recycled steel. This significantly reduces its carbon footprint.
Steel from the recycling of scrap metal in an electric furnace emits around 0.5 tonnes of CO2 per tonne produced, compared to 1.8 tonnes for that which leaves a blast furnace, due to the combustion of the coal used to deoxidize the ore of iron which turns into cast steel.
The torch is also rechargeable and reusable by around ten different carriers. Unlike the previous Games, where nearly 12,000 torches were manufactured, six times more than for Paris 2024.
“We had to be very innovative to arrive at a 0.7 mm thick torch, with complicated shaping”, and “technical assembly challenges”, argues Mr. Thirion. A bit like having an object of art made in heavy industry.
ArcelorMittal offered the steel, but now hopes to get some glory from it. At least in the small world of engineers and industry.
– “And Florange is still there!” –
Because in traditional industry, recycled steel is still often reserved for construction beams.
Well hidden in the structure of buildings, imperfections or “bubbles” on the metal, due to the remains of other metals or paints from their previous life which have amalgamated in the recycling oven, are invisible to the naked eye.
Flat, new steel, without roughness, used for cars and household appliances, often comes directly from blast furnaces.
The Olympic torch bearing the logo of the Paris Olympic Games, April 4, 2024 at the ArcelorMittal factory in Florange, Moselle (AFP/FREDERICK FLORIN)
The challenge was therefore to prove, including internally, that a high quality and very fine part could be manufactured from recycled steel from old car bodies or washing machines.
“The researchers got involved with great enthusiasm and in true complementary innovation with the torch designer Mathieu Lehanneur,” adds Mr. Thirion.
“And Florange is still there!” says factory director Jean-François Malcuit, bravado. Memory of the harsh social battles which made Florange a symbol of deindustrialization in 2013, when its last blast furnaces closed after twenty months of standoff between unions, government and management.
Today, the factory employs around 2,000 people and is focused on future technologies such as galvanizing.
The blast furnaces scheduled for demolition should themselves be “entirely recycled” in the future electric furnaces planned for Dunkirk. “It’s the natural life cycle of steel,” Mr. Malcuit says. But eleven years later, the demolition site has still not started.
© 2024 AFP
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