One of the last stages of “Optimization and scale-up of the final sealing of Sulfuric Acid Anodizing employing Design of Experiments” or SEALANT project, was carried out a few days ago. This European initiative focuses on optimizing a Chromium-free sealing process for thin layer Sulfuric Acid Anodizing (SAA) and evaluate its industrial viability as eco-friendly alternative to Chromic Acid Anodizing (CAA). Titania is coordinating all the activities developed by the different entities that are part of the consortium:  the University of Cadiz (UCA), the Technology Center of Miranda de Ebro (CTME), the Technology Center CIDETEC and the company INNOMAT COATINGS. The headquarters of the latter, in Bizkaia, hosted one of the last phases of SEALANT, specifically the industrial-scale processing of aluminum demonstrators in baths of 2000 liters, and whose results are being analyzed now.

During the last year process conditions have been optimized by Titania with flat test tubes, but at the pre-industrial bath scale. Both the results of this last phase and the conclusions of SEALANT will be presented at a final meeting of the project, which will take place on June 26 at the CIDETEC technology center. One of the objectives achieved through this research has been to demonstrate the feasibility of replacing surface polluting treatments with new technologies that are able to provide a high performance in terms of resistance to corrosion.

In addition to its role as project coordinator, Titania has also assumed technological responsibilities such as the fine-tuning  process, optimizing the pilot-scale formulation, implanting the optimized conditions on other aluminum alloys of interest and the execution of standardized characterization for process validation.

“This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 717173”.