Dissemination Session for the NATAL Project

On 24 March 2014, a Dissemination Session for the NATAL Project will take place at the ISQ’s auditorium in Tagus Park, Oeiras, Portugal. The Project’s main goal is to develop and industrially execute pre-treatment for aluminium alloys for the aeronautics industry using environmentally-friendly substances. This workshop’s target audience is the aeronautics sector, for which this topic is extremely important, since it has to replace pre-treatments currently based on chromates with more environmentally-friendly treatments, while providing the same anticorrosion protection, by 2017. The NATAL project, which is financed by the QREN (National Strategic Reference Framework) began on 1 October 2010 and ends on 31 March 2014. It is being implemented by a consortium, led by Aerohélice, with participation from ISQ and the University of Aveiro as co-promoters. This project took has the following objectives: 1. Formation and application of sol-gel layers modified by nanocontainers loaded with corrosion inhibitors distributed evenly throughout the matrix so as to provide adequate barrier properties 2. Characterisation of the microstructure, assessment of adherence and assessment of active protection against corrosion provided by sol-gel layers using electrochemical techniques 3. Preparation of larger volumes of the material with greater performance in lab studies and performing stability studies 4. Industrial pre-implementation: first uses in an industrial setting at Aerohélice’s facilities 5. Active protection against corrosion of layers applied in an industrial setting, using accelerated testing The procedures and rules to be applied have also been established in order to guarantee that all the criteria to be used comply with the stringent requirements of the aeronautical industry. Contact Ana Cabral