Components & Materials: Decarbonizing Bearings Production

When SKF and voestalpine Wire Technology announced last July that they had collaborated in bringing to market the first prototype spherical roller bearing made with steel that contains hydrogen direct reduced iron (H-DRI) to market, the accomplishment was lauded as a breakthrough in the industry’s efforts to decarbonize bearing production.

Spherical roller bearings are used in many different applications and industries, such as marine, pulp and paper production, mining and construction. The production of a bearing using this new material could have significant implications for SKF’s green steel ambitions by bolstering its ability to contribute to global efforts to combat climate change.

H-DRI is a low emission alternative to conventional iron ore-based steelmaking and a method that Annika Ölme, CTO and senior vice president, Technology Development, SKF, hopes will forge a path to using H-DRI steel for bearing applications in the coming years.

Machine Design’s recent interview with Ölme revealed that the prototype spherical roller bearing is just the tip of the iceberg to the work that SKF is putting into responsible use of materials. Below, Ölme discusses SKF’s role in the development of policy and market mechanisms that can accelerate the transition towards a net-zero steel industry.

Sustainable Bearing Production Depends on the Type of Steel Used

Machine Design: How has the drive for responsible sustainable practices in the use of materials, such as the adoption of green steel and fossil-free lubricants, impacted the development and manufacturing of your mechanical components? And why is this important?

Annika Ölme: First of all, I can confirm that it isery important to us for a couple of reasons. The first reason why sustainability is important to us is that our customers are asking for it. Because, just like we do, many of our customers also have sustainability goals.

And the other one is, we see that the sustainable development of the world is a great business opportunity for us. We have a lot of growth areas. Electrification is changing the way rotating equipment works. You have much higher speeds. It’s much harder to lubricate. During those speeds you have electrical current going through the systems. So, there’s a need for more high-tech solutions because of electrification.

Annika Olme — Annika Ölme, CTO and senior vice president, Technology Development, SKF

Hydrogen is another one. You need to transport larger quantities of hydrogen and, of course, that means that you need hydrogen-resistant solutions. For example, bearings that can withstand hydrogen in the surrounding, which is a very hard thing to accomplish. This drives growth in business for us and the whole electric vehicle. But also, electrification in the industrial area is absolutely crucial. We can also see that in automotive. Many companies are asking us for bearings with low CO2 content.

And there's a third area: Friction is energy loss. Our products reduce friction; that’s what they do. That’s what we have been doing since 1907. So, if we can find ways to further reduce that friction, we will save energy for the whole world. And actually, 20% of the energy of the world is spent overcoming friction.

If we can just change that a little bit, that actually makes a difference. It also saves costs for our customers. So, it’s a win-win, isn’t it?

Steele? Let's go to Green Steel. So, if you look at the availability of green steel today, about 30% is expected to be able to be covered by 2030 by recycled steel and the need for green steel. But by 2060 that number is not expected to be higher than 50%. We know that recycled steel is not going to cut it.

This SKF spherical roller bearing is a prototype made with steel that contains hydrogen direct reduced iron (H-DRI).

For a company like SKF, between 80% and 90% of what we sell, let’s say, is made of steel. So that’s a big deal to the world. A big chunk of the CO2 emissions that we have in the world come from steel. Steel and concrete are basically the biggest ones. So, this just shows the importance of that.

We have been working with green steel for a number of years. At the moment we are in a responsible state, and we are part of the SteelZero Commitment, which means that we will have 100% net zero steel by 2050, with 50% low emission steel by 2030. It’s pretty close by.

Of course, a large part of our products is about 97% green steel already, because we are using scrap steel, together with our supplier Ovako Metals and other steel suppliers we're working with. In addition, we use hydrogen direct reduced iron (H-DRI), based on iron ore. So, not recycled steel, but then newly produced steel made with a low-carbon process.

About a year ago, I was holding the first spherical roller bearing, made completely out of hydrogen directly reduced iron in our collaboration with voestalpine Wire Technology, a steel and technology group. So, we know it's possible. We have data that shows that it works just as well as any other steel. And now it’s a matter of how we can make sure that the steel industry can invest enough to make it happen.

In the end, it is a huge investment, and it’s very hard for every single steel company to manage these massive investments that are needed to basically have only green steel. But we’re playing our part in that, and our customers are asking us for that. Not every customer, but some, and it’s increasing all the time. But for us it’s the only way that we can also fulfill our sustainability commitments.

By 2030, we have SBTi (Science Based Targets initiative) approved goals that says that we should be CO2 neutral in our own operations. We are actually doing much better than that in many areas. So, we're good. Our traction is really good towards that goal. Then by 2050, our commitment is Scope 3 CO2 neutrality. [This category refers to reducing all indirect greenhouse gas emissions within a company’s value chain to net zero by 2050.]

So that’s full supply chain green stealing, for example, and also in the customer phase (the downstream part). Those ambitious goals that we have committed to green steel are absolutely crucial. Our customers are asking for it. There’s no other way to go, but we also realize that there are a lot of challenges.

SKF’s Technology Strategy Straddles Five Pillars Targeting 27 Technologies

MD: Sustainability is a huge topic, and so I appreciate your insights...I have one more question: In Evolution, SKF’s magazine, there is an article that quoted you as saying, “Our technology strategy describes the 26 most important technologies for the company.” Give us an overview of what that entails.

AÖ: Our technical backbone and our core is very important to us. It's the base of our success as a company over 120 or so years that we have been in existence. It all started with technical innovation. And as a component developer, there are no sub-suppliers that we can really turn to for deep technical knowledge. We have to have that technical knowledge ourselves.

We solely had a technology strategy for many, many years. But we did a big retake on this about two-and-a-half years ago. We came up with an updated version of our technology strategy to make sure that we stay in the forefront.

There are five technology categories. And there are 27 technologies, actually, below that, because we updated it a few months ago.

But let’s look at the categories. The first one is around materials. The second one is around product design. The third area is around manufacturing technology, the fourth area is around software and digital insights, and the fifth one is about modeling and predictability.

Let me take you through those five, then.

Materials are one of the key ones. And we have four technology areas here. But the two most important ones for us are steel—and it’s the green steel topic we just talked about. But it’s also steel and heat treatment overall, because we find ways to increase performance and lower cost of our products through new innovations around steel, new alloying of steel, new types of steel every year. This is very important, and we have to have extremely deep technical knowledge about that topic.

The other one is ceramic materials. I mentioned earlier about ceramic bearings and ceramic hybrid bearings that actually stop current going through that product, which actually allows an electric vehicle to continue to drive on the road. This type of material has become increasingly important in the era of electrification. So those two were the most important ones in that first category of materials.

And the second one is product design. One that stands out, no surprise, is around rolling bearing technology. We have to be the best ones to understand the minute details of how to design the best bearing. That’s pretty clear. But we also have magnetic bearings. We have seal technology, seal products and lubrication systems. Those are other areas of product design that are crucially important in our technology strategy.

If we take a step into the next one—manufacturing technologies—we have additive technology, additive and 3D printing, that are crucially important for us. We are already today 3D printing products, and both from metals. And of course, also from polymer materials, and remanufacturing, which also relates to the sustainability perspective. What if we could remanufacture half of the bearings when they are at the end of their life? Take them back and send them out again?

That is a really important technology area for us in manufacturing. And we are also already doing that but on a smaller scale. And we have been doing that for 20-odd years. But that’s an important technology. And then, of course, across the value chain in our factories and the manufacturing technologies that are such a big part of our competitiveness as well.

When it comes to software and digital insights, this one has been growing in importance and has taken a much bigger space in our latest technology strategy, as you can imagine. The first area there is applied AI...Where do we need to use AI? How does it change our products? How does it change our customers’ experience with us? How does it change our efficiency? So applied AI is important.

And of course, cybersecurity, low-code, no-code software development, digital twins and industrial internet of things (IIoT). All those things are technology areas within our software and digital insights technology category.

And the last one related to software and digital insights as well is modeling and predictability, where we want to have the best knowledge and the best algorithms to be able to predict that future of that rotating equipment. So, tribology—how do two metal surfaces with oil in between behave on the normal level. And what is the effect?

It is about testing and validation, condition monitoring. And all of that data—how do we make sense of that? And how can we evolve the life models of bearings even more? We released a new bearing life model that is now coming into standards for everyone. But we were the first ones to do that. We must stay in the forefront of our core technology around tribology, lubrication and so on, and predictability.

Those are the five categories and some of the 27 technology areas. We know that this evolves. We also have a technology radar in those five categories where we keep track. We’re looking at quantum: Should we bring it in? Let’s wait a little bit, and then let’s see when we bring it in. We’re looking at things like other types of materials that could be used. We’re looking at things like how AI develops in the next step with the general intelligence coming up.

We’re always looking at that radar to see if we should bring something in or just watch it. and we consider how we can make sure that we stay in front of new technologies that come up. So that’s how we work with our core technology strategy across SKF.