CREATION Project

Innovative protective coatings for energy and resource efficiency applications in power plants (CREATION)

Project Description:

The economic losses due to erosion of infrastructure and equipment are enormous. According to experts, 25 to 30 percent of annual corrosion costs could be avoided if best erosion management practices were used. In addition, unexpected failures due to corrosion can cause significant losses, not only economic but also environmental and social, which affect public security and security of supply and require costly repairs.

Different types of corrosion can occur in structures or systems made of metal, depending on the environmental conditions and types of media involved as well as various solutions have been described with relatively good anti-corrosion properties.

Innovative liquid thermal spray (Suspension Plasma Spray, SPS) coatings are to be developed in the project CREATION, using precursor materials with an average particle size in the superfine and / or nano scale. These coatings will exploit the properties of nanoconducts with the morphological characteristics of denser microstructures, with better adhesion and greater resistance to chemical corrosion than conventional (e.g. Atmospheric Plasma Spray, APS) coatings.

The CREATION project aims to develop innovative sustainable corrosion solutions by developing new materials and methods that will be done by surface modification of metallic powders and by developing an appropriate methodology for the preparation of commercial products for use as feedstocks in the SPS process. The scientific and technical objectives to achieve the main objective of the project are described as follows:

1. Development of supply materials and thermal spray coating methods
2. Scaling-up of coating process and characterization of coatings
3. Application of optimized coatings on industrial scale products
4. Business model and exploitation of results

The coatings will be tested at laboratory (MIRTEC, University of Thessaly), pilot (CERTH) and industrial scale (PPC).

The industrial application will concern a PPC’s lignite fueled steam power station and in particular, the (lignite) milling and scrubber/slurry pumping process.

Finally, the CREATION project will create solutions at the level of implementation of the European legislation while at the same time increasing the life of mills’ and pumps’ blades and thus the time intervals for which maintenance and replacement are required.

CERTH/CPERI Role in the project:

CERTH/CPERI is the coordinator of the CREATION project, transferring its expertise in the fields of lignite sampling, fuel quality characterization and computational fluid mechanics (CFD) simulation in order to solve complex fluid flow problems. In this project, CERTH has undertaken the following activities:

1. Laboratory scale tests on mill blades (Investigation of functional parameters, tests before and after the application of coatings, comparison of results).
2. Laboratory scale tests on slurry pump impellers (Sampling and analysis of absorber recirculation (scrubber) slurry, pre- and post-coating tests, comparison of results).
3. CFD simulation of activities 1 and 2 in order to analyze the mechanical and thermal stress.
4. Preliminary business plan development for the industrial application of the new production processes.
5. Market penetration strategy for the commercialization of new final products.
6. Intellectual property rights’ protection strategy.

Contact

Dr. Panagiotis Grammelis (Research director), grammelis@certh.gr

Chrysovalantis Ketikidis (Research associate), ketikidis@certh.gr

Christos Evaggelou (Research associate), evaggelou@certh.gr