Sustainable surface treatments of complex shape components for transsectorial industrial innovation

General Information

Light alloys, like Aluminum (Al), have shown to be good options for replacing steel in many sectors due to higher thermal conductivity and weight reduction. However, without protection, recycled Al is prone to corrosion under operation in harsh environments. The Sure2Coat project will enable the use and uptake of Al in new sectors involving products with complex shapes, by new sustainable manufacturing methods with lower energy consumption for end users.
Corrosion is a major challenge with an annual global cost of $2.5 trillion. It is therefore fundamental to develop and validate new surface treatments to produce corrosion resistant and conductive coatings for new applications. Sure2Coat will develop and validate new surface treatments for light alloys (anaphoretic ecoating, laser structuring, composite-PEO coating) in three use cases in which energy usage is key: Electrical engines, heating systems and heat storage units. Sure2Coat pays special attention to effective design for future integration into their respective production lines.
The target of Sure2Coat is to increase the energy efficiency by 50-60% and increase the use of recycled Al by 70% by using surface treatments and innovative production technologies (casting, virtualisation), with lower energy consumption (from 10%) during manufacturing.
From an industrial point of view, a prerequisite for succeeding is continuity in manufacturing R&D&I projects and training/education of required staff, which Sure2Coat will foster by broad dissemination and exploitation of the project results across the manufacturing value chain. Sure2Coat will result in strengthening the European manufacturing value chain by developing European industries with leading edge technologies on manufacturing materials and allowing for accelerating rollout for green transition.
Hereon will contribute via the development of protective and heat conductive oxide coatings and smart nano-containers as additives for corrosion protective coatings. Furthermore, surface and material characterization facilities will be provided to the academic and industrial partners in the project.

EU-Programme Acronym and Subprogramme Area	HORIZON-CL4-2022-TWIN-TRANSITION-01-02
Project Type	Research & Innovation Action (RIA)
Contract Number	Grant Agreement 101091982
Co-ordinator	SINTEF AS (NO)

Funding for the Project (€)	Funding for Hereon (€)
5,905,508	648,952

Contact Person at Hereon

Dr. Maria Serdechnova, Phone: +49 4152 87 1991 and Dr. Carsten Blawert, Phone: +49 4152 87 1991, Institute of Surface Science, Department of Functional Surfaces (MOF) E-mail contact

Participants

Associacion Espanola de Normalizacion (ES), BOSCH Termotecnologia SA (PT), COWA Thermal Solutions (CH), Fundacion CIDETEC (ES), Ge Avio SRL (IT), Micro-Arc S.C. Molon Z, Wieczorek T (PL), Politechnika Wroclawska (PL), Politecnico di Milano (IT), Scuola Universitaria Professionale Della Svizzera Italiana (CH), Siemens Aktiengesellschaft (DE), SINTEF (NO), Universidade De Aveiro (PT), University of Ljubljana (SI)

Last Update: 11. April 2023