$215,000 Research Grant For Eliminating Chromate Conversion Waste

                       

 

 

A Fort Collins, CO research firm has been awarded a $215,000 grant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to study “selective elimination of waste in a metal finishing operation.”

 

Ionedge Corporation, which the EPA says has received over $2.3 million in research grants to date, was founded in 1988 with a focus on developing environmentally safe coatings.

 

“Today, this company has a successful track record of inventing, developing and then commercializing novel waste-free coating technologies,” says company president Mandar Sunthankar, who adds that he has helped his clients obtain over $14 million in research grants in the past three years.

 

The EPA award synopsis for the most recent grant:

 

“Chromate conversion coatings are routinely applied to cadmium in electroplating. This metal finishing process generates large quantities of hazardous hexavalent chromium and heavy-metal waste. This is a major environmental concern. Consequently, an environmentally benign coating finish is proposed as a suitable alternative to the chromat conversion coating. This coating will be applied using the unique dry plating process developed at Ionedge Corporation. This benign material will eliminate chromium waste in cadmium plating. Simultaneously, the dry plating will eliminate liquids, and will in situ recycle solid cadmium. In this research, the feasibility of applying a desired quality of this material to the dry plated cadmium will be investigated. Variation in its physical properties related to the processing conditions will be studied. A successful demonstration of this new concept could result in total elimination of hazardous liquids in a cadmium plating operation. In addition, the dry plating will minimize solid waste.”
 

More information here: http://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/202756