endika

CIDETEC Surface Engineering has recently taken part in the latest COST Action e-MINDS workshop, in which CIDETEC participated as one of the Spanish representatives as well as leading one of the working groups for this project.

The workshop was held between 13 and 15 February at the Milan Polytechnic.  During the workshop, the CIDETEC Surface Engineering researcher, Asier Salicio, presented the paper entitled “Development and characterization of monolayered and multilayered electroless NiP coatings”.

The workshop was attended by researchers from several European countries and included an extensive programme of conferences on new developments in the field of electro-chemistry. In addition to the scientific programme, by attending this workshop CIDETEC Surface Engineering was also able to continue strengthening the excellent links it maintains with many of the European research agents present.  

On 26 and 28 February, follow-up meetings were held in Brussels for the European projects Ecoxy and Recysite. Cidetec is involved in both projects and is the Ecoxy project’s coordinator.

The first Ecoxy follow-up meeting was held at the BBI JU’s offices on February 26 and Cidetec’s representatives were Ione Cendoya, Sarah Montes and Aratz Genua. At the meeting, a review was made of the progress of the first stage of the project (M1-M18) and the main results obtained. Each WP leader spoke about how their work package had advanced and its results, and Cidetec provided a general overview and a preview of the next steps to be taken, as described in the DoA and in accordance with all the observations and suggestions received by the PO and the external experts. In short, the project can be said to be making good progress and both the PO and the experts are satisfied with the results presented.

Also, the follow-up meeting for the Recysite project was held at the CNRS offices in Brussels on February 28, attended by Aratz Genua in representation of Cidetec. At this meeting, the progress made on the project over the last few months was reviewed and the work to be done until the project’s completion in June 2019 was defined. The consortium’s next meeting, which will be the last for this project, is due to be held on May 22 and 23 at SISPRA’s facilities in Zaragoza. It will be attended by the Project Officer and the EASME monitor in addition to all the project partners.

The European INNPAPER project consortium met in Brussels on 5 and 6 February for the six-monthly monitoring meeting and the review by the European Commission of the status of the project. Both meetings were held at the headquarters of the Basque Delegation in Brussels.

As coordinator of the project, CIDETEC was in charge of organising and leading the meeting, with Luis César Colmenares and Pedro Lamas representing CIDETEC Energy Storage and Ana Viñuales representing CIDETEC Surface Engineering.

During the first session, in the six-monthly consortium meeting, each partner explained the progress made since the last meeting within the different work packages, technical discussions were held by working groups and the next actions were defined.

The first period review meeting that took place on the second day started with the introduction of the Project Officer of the European Commission and the expert who will act as technical reviewer, then presenting the status of the project at both a technical and economic level, showing the progress made in the framework of each work package during the first year and answering the questions that were posed by both the PO and the technical reviewer. Afterwards, they met privately and then conveyed their very positive impressions to the consortium.

The next six-monthly consortium meeting is scheduled for June 2019 and will take place at the headquarters of GUARRO CASAS in Barcelona. The next review will not take place until June 2020 and will be held at the CEA headquarters in Grenoble (France).

The KaRMA2020 project coordinated by CIDETEC has reached its final year. The project, which has already been running for two years, held its monitoring meeting in Valencia (Spain), hosted by AIMPLAS Technological Centre.

Currently, it is approaching its final phase, focused on the manufacture of different raw materials obtained from chicken feather on the industrial scale: polyurethane coatings, keratin, bioplastics, fabrics and thermostable resins. The validation of these raw materials will take place during the next project term, for which fertilizers, biodegradable packaging, technical textiles and biocomposites will also be manufactured. In all the products, raw materials of fossil origin will be replaced by others from renewable sources developed in KaRMA2020.

Dr Eva García-Lecina, CIDETEC Surface Engineering director, was interviewed by European Coatings magazine regarding her projections on developments concerning the research and application of new technologies to functional coatings.

European Coatings is a publication of Vincentz Network, a publishing group based in Hanover that serves as European reference in everything concerning surface coatings, from research up to application in industry.

The online interview is available in English

https://www.european-coatings.com/Raw-materials-technologies/Science-today-coatings-tomorrow/Interview-The-forecast-on-research-and-applications-of-functional-coatings-is-very-optimistic

as well as in German

https://www.farbeundlack.de/Wissenschaft-Technik/Technologien/Interview-Die-Prognose-fuer-die-Forschung-und-Anwendung-von-funktionellen-Beschichtungen-ist-sehr-optimistisch

 and will appear in the printed version of the magazine’s March issue.