Objective
Around 18.000 European SMEs from the surface engineering sector (electroplating, anodising, galvanising) have several environmental and worker safety problems (hazardous chemicals, liquid and solid wastes) which enter into conflict with IPPC Directive 96/61/EC about integrated pollution prevention and control. PVD is a sophisticated advanced technology for applying coatings in a high vacuum, opening the possibility for applying coatings of improved performance over those employed at present.
It generates no waste water and makes an optimum use of the materials so it is environmentally friendly. For all these reasons, it is an optimum candidate for substituting current problematic surface treatment technologies before mentioned, and that additionally do not offer such a potential for improvement and innovation of the coatings as market requires The objective of the project is the development of the technologies necessary to reduce the cost of the PVD treatment so as to make it affordable to the SMEs.
Those new technologies include:
- The development of a combination of PVD with other pre-treatments, that allows the application of PVD coating onto different kinds of materials (steel, brass, zamak, zinc or aluminium alloy components)
- A low cost, flexible and fast PVD coating process and machine with optimum throughput and reliability, to shorten time in order to reduce the cost of coating it by PVD and able to coat a broad range of pieces with different coatings Eleven IAGs, SMEs and RTDs from five European Countries representing 50% of the surface treatment sector in Europe have come together to develop these new PVD processes.
The project will have a very positive impact on the sector competitiveness, reducing consumption of raw materials, energy and water, avoiding waste production and improving workers safety. On the other hand, project will support European SMEs to compete in international markets and to lead surface treatment processes in the world.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwater treatment processeswastewater treatment processes
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrytransition metals
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrypost-transition metals
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcoating and films
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
Keywords
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
FP6-2004-SME-COLL
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
Collective - SMEs-Collective research projectsCoordinator
EIBAR
Spain