This year's ZVO Annual Congress will start on the evening of September 14 in Leipzig at the Kongresshalle am Zoo with the official opening ceremony. After a welcome by ZVO Chairman Walter Zeschky, Prof. Dr. Frank Mücklich from the Institute for Functional Materials at Saarland University will give a talk on "On materials that can be recycled - and why we are sending them into space". His lecture will show how we can learn from nature in terms of material cycles and transfer this to material coatings. The actual lecture program will take place on September 15 and 16 at the Congress Center Leipzig on the exhibition grounds. In addition to the recurring topics such as process monitoring and product quality, wear protection, complementary technologies to the partly new demands on electroplating and surface technology or the "Results from Research - Young Colleagues Report", this year's focus is on the following topics.
Climate neutrality, energy and resource efficiency
A full-day block of lectures with a total of twelve contributions will deal with the forward-looking topic of climate neutrality, energy and resource efficiency. In electroplating and surface technology, demands have not only risen in terms of quality and technical requirements, but sustainability and the economical use of resources are also in focus - from both environmental and economic aspects. In view of the current sharp rise in energy and raw material prices, the efficient use of energy and resources is more important than ever - especially for electroplating, where energy and material costs account for a large proportion of total costs. At the same time, there is potential for reducing the use of energy and resources. For companies affected by the price increases, the efficient use of energy and resources can become a key competence that offers an economic as well as ecological competitive advantage over the competition. Energy generation and storage will be the subject of another block of presentations. For a sustainable energy supply, storage and converters are needed that are adapted to the special conditions of renewable energy sources such as wind or sun. Challenges arise from the highly fluctuating power supply of these energy sources. Promising candidates for electrochemical storage are batteries, for example based on lithium, but cost and material availability must be considered. In the case of converters, great hopes rest on electrolysers and fuel cells that work with hydrogen as an energy carrier. Here, too, there are numerous unanswered questions about material availability and long-term stability.
Entrepreneur forum: Management meets surface
The ZVO has taken up the request of many medium-sized companies and is offering a full-day entrepreneur forum on Thursday during the ZVO Surface Days 2022 under the motto "Management meets Surface". Here, participants can expect an interesting mix of twelve lectures on the topics of management/company leadership, personnel management, company succession, early detection of insolvency, energy and digitalization. Another block of lectures deals with planning and decisions, what influences them and how risks can be minimized - in private as well as in professional everyday life. Here, the lectures span a thematic arc, starting with theoretical considerations of systems and their fluctuating, sometimes chaotic behavior, through the complex interrelationships in plant planning and systemic modeling as an instrument for more efficient analyses, to a review of the workshop "Sustainable Planning and Decision Making" held by the ZVO in cooperation with the Technical University of Ilmenau.
Chromium(VI): What's next?
Due to restrictions imposed by European chemicals policy, above all REACH, and the general striving for environmentally friendly technologies, alternative, chromium(VI)-free processes are coming into focus. A block of lectures at the ZVO Surface Days will highlight various examples here, first and foremost trivalent chromium processes, as well as 3D printing and gravure printing processes that do not require the use of hexavalent chromium. In addition, there will be blocks of lectures on advances in plant and control technology, as well as new developments in functional coatings and cathodic corrosion protection.
The complete lecture program including abstracts and vitae of the speakers is available at www.oberflaechentage.zvo.org.
Autor(en): wi
