OREANDA-NEWS. January 13, 2010. The project will create a network of innovative production centers offering comprehensive solutions for applying a broad spectrum of multifunctional nanostructured coatings.

Participants in the project, in addition to RUSNANO, are Technological Systems for Protective Coatings, government corporation Rosatom, and management company United Engine-Building Corporation. The total project budget is four billion rubles. RUSNANO will invest 1.22 billion rubles and hold a 49 percent share in the equity of the project company.

The project’s mission is to introduce modern import-substituting and resource-saving technologies for applying functional coatings for a variety of industries.

Specialists from the project company will offer customers turnkey solutions for applying multi-functional nanostructured coatings—thermal barrier, wear-resistant, corrosion-resistant—to refurbish and lengthen the working life of equipment in the oil and gas, aviation, nuclear, machine-building, metallurgy, and construction industries and in other fields. The coatings protect structures like drilling platforms, bridges and metal construction from corrosion; they safeguard shut-off valves and pumping and compressor fixtures; they protect equipment for drilling, oil and gas extraction, and processing and refining from wear and tear. They imbue manufactured articles with special properties.

Production centers for application of the coatings will be situated in regional centers, such as, Tyumen, Surgut, St. Petersburg, Perm, Ufa, and Kursk, near businesses and plants that are potential customers for these services. Proximity will enable customers to lower costs for logistics when purchasing the coatings. The centers will be fully equipped to fill orders with solutions that are tailored to the specific buyer.

Project technologies involve a high-speed physical vapor deposition process and ion-plasma magnetron sputtering. They are among the technologies most in demand and most promising worldwide. New technologies for applying nanostructured coatings are replacing old, environmentally dangerous ones, in particular, galvanization processes. In combination, the two planned technologies make it possible to achieve new properties in coatings.

One example of benefits from the use of protective coatings is the resource enhancement gained in gas-turbine engines valves with different functional nanocoatings. They improve efficiency and engine power and resolve key problems in developing fifth-generation engines, opening the way to considerable improvement in the technical characteristics of Russian airplanes.

The project plans to make further refinements in existing technologies and to develop new types of nanostructured coatings and new materials for their application. The project is oriented toward the Russian market.

“This is one of the most important projects in RUSNANO’s portfolio. With the introduction of these technologies, highly competitive products with new properties will appear in many sectors of the Russian economy. We are talking not only about gas-turbine engines or drilling motors. There is bridge construction that will not have to be given anti-corrosive protection every year; there is a new generation of aquatic equipment and ships whose hulls and framework will be resistant to aggressive ocean and sea environments. There are thousands of different applications. In addition, nanocoating technologies are capable of lengthening the useful life and raising the effectiveness of existing equipment in many areas of industry,” noted RUSNANO Managing Director Alexander Kondrashov.

Technological Systems for Protective Coatings is the leading and the largest privately owned company in Russia engaged in developing a wide range of protective and functional coatings applied with physical vapor deposition and welding methods. Established in 1989 by specialists from the Central Scientific Research Institute for Machine Building, the TSPC group of companies has many years of experience and an extensive network of partners in Russia and abroad. All of this enables TSPC to create metal and metal-ceramic coatings for higher durability of equipment for a wide array of producers. The company holds the lead in strengthening, protecting, repairing, and restoring machine parts. It possesses technologies for manufacturing equipment and applying protective coatings using a variety of methods for deposition. With its technologies for high-speed, gas-flame, detonation, and plasma deposition and plasma sputtering, the company has full control over the technological process, beginning with development of methods and equipment that meet the most modern requirements to their comprehensive implementation into production and maintenance. TSPC specialists have protected the famous and recently restored sculpture Worker and the Collective Farm Woman from corrosion. They have applied a sulfur-hydrogen resistant coating on the absorbers at Gazprom and wear-resistant coatings on road equipment components. At present TSCP holds about 50 percent of the Russian market in gas-thermal coatings.

Management company United Engine-Building Corporation (wholly owned subsidiary of OBORONPROM) is one of the leading mechanical engineering enterprises in Russia, measured by its creative potential and by the production capacity it has at its disposal.

The company works primarily in the following areas:

Engineering and large-scale manufacturing of contemporary gas-turbine engines for the aviation and rocket industries; energy; sea, rail, pipeline, and overland transportation;

Modernization and guaranteed exploitation of equipment it produces;

Realization of far-reaching programs to expand its gas-turbine engine businesses;

Attraction and concentration of intellectual, production, and financial resources in order to implement new technologies and international standards in the company’s gas-turbine engine manufacturing businesses.

The State Atomic Energy Corporation, Rosatom, runs all nuclear assets of the Russian Federation, both civil and weapons. Along with commercial activities which move forward nuclear power and nuclear fuel cycle facilities, it acts as a governmental agent, primarily in the field of national security (nuclear deterrence), nuclear and radiation safety, basic and applied science. Besides, it has the authority to fulfill on behalf of the Russian Federation the international commitments undertaken by the nation with regard to the peaceful use of atomic energy and non-proliferation.