“The aviation industry faces a number of challenges and the next generation of aerospace technologies need to respond to several specific operational and societal pressures,” said Marc van der Geest, Lab Manager, Aerospace Coatings.

“There is clearly a growing demand for aircrafts, but also a demand to reduce fuel consumption, noise, emission of pollutants and maintenance costs. On top of that, there is a need for materials used in the next generation of the aviation industry to become lighter, cheaper and more eco-compliant for disposal.”

The partner organizations are segmented into different areas of focus, and AkzoNobel’s contribution is greatest in the metallic workstream. Peter Visser, Project Lead Corrosion Expertise Group, joins Marc in representing AkzoNobel in the project.

Marc continued: “We’re working on developing chromate-free corrosion inhibition technologies and improving primer coating concepts. Being part of this project allows us to accelerate that development.

“The organization of work allows the project to capture synergies between the different members. By doing this we have a great chance to optimize each other’s techniques and behaviors, years before they are actually used in the manufacturing process.”

The EcoTECH consortium includes twelve partners from Germany, Netherlands, Greece and Spain and is co-led by Airbus, Dassault Aviation and Fraunhofer. The project will run until 2024 and a similar previous initiative that focused on aircraft design resulted in 1.5 million jobs and USD160 billion worth of new products and services. Find out more at www.cleansky2ecotech.eu/