AL Circle: What role does research and development play in addressing heat treatment challenges in the aluminium industry? Are there any recent breakthroughs or ongoing studies worth mentioning?

José Javier González: We analyse annually the research and development of global trends in the foundry industry, identifying the main topics in which the industry works. When it comes to the aluminium foundry sector, we see that heat treatment is not showing itself as the most relevant topic for centres or companies. A series of factors can explain this behaviour: the heath treatment needed for aluminium companies is a mature area where the processes have remained useful and steady. That does not mean that the research is losing power but that the investment needed to explore new alternatives is higher than in other parts of the process. For example, let's think about a company producing for Aeronautics. We see that this sector sets very rigid limits for the heat treatment process, so in so many cases, there is only a chance to explore new alternatives once those have been standardised. As a result, there is little margin for small to medium companies for practical research.

However, we know that some interesting initiatives are being studied, for example, a change in the way the cooling system is fed or the use of part of the energy wasted in a sub-process to feed another one. The existence of several foundry processes in the same plant and the distance between them can be some keys to the success of this last idea.