GREENLINE: Development of Efficient Heat Treatment Strategies to Accelerate the Decarbonization of Forging and Casting Processes

The Euro­pean metals indus­try faces the key chall­enge of signi­fi­cant­ly redu­cing its ener­gy con­sump­ti­on in pro­duc­tion – wit­hout com­pro­mi­sing the qua­li­ty of the manu­fac­tu­red com­pon­ents. Con­ven­tio­nal heat tre­at­ment pro­ces­ses, which are essen­ti­al for achie­ving spe­ci­fic mecha­ni­cal pro­per­ties, con­tri­bu­te signi­fi­cant­ly to over­all ener­gy con­sump­ti­on and pro­cess-rela­ted emis­si­ons. Fur­ther­mo­re, their reli­ance on fos­sil-fuel-fired fur­naces not only leads to hig­her ope­ra­ting cos­ts but also to a gro­wing regu­la­to­ry bur­den due to stric­ter envi­ron­men­tal regulations.

The project’s inno­va­ti­ve approach: The con­cept uti­li­zes the ther­mal ener­gy of the com­pon­ents after the cas­ting or for­ging pro­cess – ther­eby avo­i­ding the need to reheat them befo­re heat tre­at­ment. To achie­ve this, GREENLINE com­bi­nes elec­tric hea­ting tech­no­lo­gies with an ultra-fast coo­ling sys­tem to enable pre­cise con­trol of metall­ur­gi­cal trans­for­ma­ti­on pro­ces­ses. The result is a signi­fi­cant increase in ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy as well as a more sus­tainable design of indus­tri­al manu­fac­tu­ring processes.

RWTH’s Con­tri­bu­ti­on

In the GREENLINE pro­ject, RWTH Aachen is lea­ding the deve­lo­p­ment of the ultra-fast coo­ling sys­tem and its tech­ni­cal design. This work is based on seve­ral nume­ri­cal simu­la­ti­on models deve­lo­ped spe­ci­fi­cal­ly for the pro­ject con­text, which simu­la­te the ther­mal pro­ces­ses during com­po­nent soli­di­fi­ca­ti­on, the ultra-fast coo­ling pha­se, and the sub­se­quent heat treatment.

In addi­ti­on, RWTH is respon­si­ble for the final sus­taina­bi­li­ty assess­ment of the pro­ject. To this end, a com­pre­hen­si­ve life cycle assess­ment (LCA) will be con­duc­ted, sys­te­ma­ti­cal­ly com­pa­ring the con­ven­tio­nal refe­rence pro­cess and the new GREENLINE process.