Survey on metallurgy and transport in Russia, with an interview to Antonello Colussi, CEO of Danieli Russia by Federico Piazza

The aluminum industry in Russia is not catalyzed only by the presence of the giant Rusal, the world's second largest group in the primary product market. In fact Russia also boasts advanced laboratories and research centers, such as those that gather every year at the Congress "Non-ferrous metals and minerals" at Krasnoyarsk, in the mining region of Siberia. In the field of research for innovation in industrial applications, for example, the work of MISIS, the Russian National University of Science and Technology, deserves to be highlighted for experimenting new aluminum alloys (Al-Ni-La crystallization) that enable a significant reduction in weight for transport, aeronautics and automotive.

Plenty of innovation particularly regards aluminium for transports. For example, it concerns new elaborations on the issue of healthiness of interiors of railway carriages, with antiseptic air conditioning systems and carriages with AntiCovid doors and windows, as a result of special metal treatments, appliable also to aluminum, as such those engineered by the Italian specialized company Gaser.

Railway tracks with a third leading track in metropolitan railway systems is another innovative feature. Automation and sensors to increase safety are very important in rail transport. On this matter, for example, train wheel axis can be equipped with particular chip controllers capable of real-time monitoring of both wheel functioning and the state of rails. These technological innovations developed in the West have not yet been implemented in the large railway networks of Russia and India, and more generally in Asia, where large investments in the rail sector are expected. But precisely for this reason, the ongoing experiences and the debate on mobility in Russia offer a particular perspective of innovation in the transport sector in terms of scientific, technological and industrial intersection between the East and the West.