FORGE

FORGE

FORGE

Together with the Universitat Jaume I of Castellón (UJI) we are working on the European project FORGE: "Development of novel and cost-effective coatings for high-energy processing applications" whose main objective of the project is to develop new coating materials for a sustainable industrial future.

Overall, FORGE aims to provide a new knowledge-based framework for designing complex compositional materials, custom-designed with the required combination of properties, including hardness, softness, toughness, gas impermeability and/or corrosion resistance, tailored to meet specific current and future needs in an energy-intensive industrial processing environment.

The advantages that these new materials can offer are, for example, to provide high performance to a substrate that does not have it on its own, as well as the improved ability and ease of repair of a coated system, both in cost and application. In addition, these new materials would have a high ability to detect their own degradation by embedding phases with specific light-emitting footprints in a multilayer coating, among other functionalities.

FORGE also optimises the coating application methodology, which will allow users to have options for equipment refurbishment, thus avoiding major modifications at major service points. The project also aims to establish new priority design options for new generations of equipment. In this way, FORGE contributes to improving the affordability and sustainability of Europe's energy-intensive industries through a life-cycle approach to the technical specifications of materials and systems, enabling them to scale up production and introduce new processes with lower CO2 emissions, increasing resistance to embrittlement, corrosion/erosion problems and reducing the overall lifetime costs of industrial equipment and facilities.

Funded by the European Programme Horizon 2020 in the framework of the Call for proposals Leardership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies under the reference 958457-FORGE.