Webinar Recap: Future of Industrial Sustainable Plating with NICKEFFECT and MOZART Projects

On December 5th, 2024, industry leaders and innovators came together for a highly engaging webinar on Industrial Sustainable Plating, featuring cutting-edge advancements from two major EU-funded initiatives: NICKEFFECT and MOZART. This event offered an exciting platform to discuss the future of sustainable plating technologies, highlighting the crucial role of innovation in reducing the environmental impact of industrial processes.

 

The webinar kicked off with a welcome and introduction from Danijel Pavlica, Project Manager at F6S, who set the stage by emphasising the growing importance of sustainable practices in industrial plating and the important role played by both projects in driving this change.

 

Insights and Key Takeaways

 

Asier Salicio Paz from CIDETEC presented the key advancements of the NICKEFFECT project, focusing on the development of sustainable electrochemical plating processes. He began by introducing CIDETEC and its work in the Basque Country, emphasising their strong involvement in European projects and commitment to surface treatment technologies for industries like automotive, energy, and aeronautics.

 

He discussed the importance of finding nickel-based alternatives to replace Platinum Group Metals (PGMs), which are critical for applications like water electrolysis, fuel cells, and digital storage devices. NICKEFFECT aims to develop PGM-free catalytic materials, focusing on sustainability and scalability from lab-scale to industrial levels.

 

Asier highlighted the technical challenges involved in scaling up electrochemical processes, such as moving from small volumes of electrolytes to large-scale industrial applications. Key issues include cost management, controlling complex geometries in real components, and ensuring the sustainability of the processes through energy efficiency and waste management. He also mentioned the importance of overcoming barriers related to complex geometries and material behavior during electrochemical treatments, such as working with metallic foams and innovative surfaces.

 

The sustainability aspect was central to NICKEFFECT’s goals, and Asier emphasised the project’s effort to develop green chemical processes with reduced environmental impacts. He concluded by discussing various case studies related to scaling up processes, such as design-of-experiments approaches and computational simulations aimed at optimizing electrochemical surface treatments.

 

Luca Magagnin from Politecnico di Milano introduced the MOZART project, which focuses on developing alternatives to hard chromium through the use of composite plating technologies. The project seeks to solve a long-standing challenge in the plating industry by replacing harmful chromium with nickel-based composite materials containing nano-particles. The primary goal is to achieve coatings with high wear resistance and lubricating properties for industrial applications.

 

Luca outlined MOZART’s approach of using metal matrix composites where hard ceramic particles are co-deposited with metals to create a strong, durable coating. He discussed the advantages of nanoparticles in the 70-100 nanometer range, which offer the best balance between mechanical properties and industrial safety.

 

He provided examples of how MOZART is advancing the scalability of these processes, demonstrating that composite plating can be a real alternative to hard chromium. Luca also emphasised the safe and sustainable by design strategy adopted by MOZART, focusing on using eco-friendly electrolytes and removing toxic chemicals like boric acid from the process.

 

Luca also introduced tools being developed in the project, such as online monitoring technologies and AI-driven simulations, to ensure the quality and uniformity of the coatings. He presented preliminary results from the project’s pilot lines, which showed that the new formulations could match or exceed the performance of traditional plating methods in terms of wear resistance, hardness, and surface uniformity.

 

During the Q&A and discussion session, participants were able to ask questions directly to the experts, fostering a lively exchange of ideas on the future of sustainable industrial plating. 

 

The webinar concluded with closing remarks from Danijel Pavlica, who reinforced the significance of events like these in bridging the gap between research and industry, as well as the importance of the 4SEE Cluster. He highlighted the potential for further collaborations and invited participants to stay tuned for future webinars in the NICKEFFECT series, which will continue to explore innovations that drive sustainability in key industrial sectors.