Heat treatment and surface engineering using safer and cleaner practices, better energy efficiency and limited environmental impact processes

摘要

As the world's largest provider of thermal processing services, Bodycote is committed to acting responsibly as a good corporate citizen, to reducing the environmental impact and the energy consumption of the Group's activities, and also to providing to its employees a safe working environment.While continually seeking to minimize the impact on the environment, Bodycote has a proactive approach to improving energy efficiency means and has implemented a variety of systems and methods to reduce water, gas consumption and re-use energy, and also, with the help of ISO 14001 accreditation of most facilities.By using some examples, we will present some concrete cases, in order to:— decrease CO2 and NH3 emissions by using low pressure processes in carburising and plasma nitriding instead of atmospheric pressure processes using CO and CO2 gases,— decrease the use of quenching oil followed by a degreasing step by using high pressure gas quenching — decrease the use of chlorinated solvents in thermal processing activities by using totally sealed process or aqueous degreasing — develop the use of lower temperature thermochemical treatments, like: gas nitrocarburised + post oxidised layer on steels or Kolsterising on stainless steels— help expand the use of lighter materials, such as aluminium or titanium alloys, or new materials carried out by new heat processes (post heat treatment after additive manufacturing, powder manufacturing with Hipping), by developing thermal processing, like: heat treatment, polymer quenching, Hipping, low pressure nitriding, ion implantation...— develop the use of carbon fiber-reinforced carbon (C/C) for vacuum furnace fixture systems in order to decrease: distortion, cycle times, energy consumption, and to increase: productivity, higher quenching efficiency, ease to handling due to the weight, and the lifetime compared to heat resistant alloys.