“At Innoval, we believe innovation is a key in positioning aluminium as the material of choice in the circular economy,” Professor Michael (Mike) Cinch, Senior Consultant & Materials Group Leader at Innoval

Professor Michael (Mike) Cinch is a Senior Consultant & Materials Group Leader at Innoval. He attained a PhD in Materials Engineering and Materials Design at the University of Nottingham after receiving an Industrial Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. In addition to his background in applied materials research, product development and process engineering, Mike has extensive experience in strategic planning, technology road mapping and innovation management from his time in senior leadership positions in business units in the US and Europe.

Mike is also a Visiting Professor of Materials Innovation and Sustainability at Loughborough University and is a passionate advocate of collaboration and partnerships to drive the development and commercialisation of new technologies. He holds advisory board positions at several universities in the UK and US and is a Vice-President of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), where he is Chair of their Technology Communities Board.

AlCircle: To meet the worldwide increasing demand for sustainable aluminium solutions, what innovative solutions would you suggest?

Prof. Mike Clinch: Sustainable aluminium technologies are becoming increasingly important. Consumers from the end-use sectors are demanding products with a lower carbon footprint, which will help them reach their own sustainability targets. There is not one solution that we can recommend because every case is different. Instead, we work alongside our clients to help them examine their product design, material choice, method of manufacture, and their supply chain. Usually, there are many ways in which the carbon footprint of a product can be reduced. However, one clear trend we are seeing is the desire to increase the recycled content of alloys across multiple sectors. This requires careful sourcing of scrap materials and controlled manufacturing processes to achieve the desired quality and performance attributes.

Projects like this would usually be supported by a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This is a methodology to assess the environmental impact of a product or service by the compilation and evaluation of inputs, processes and outputs of a product system. The product system will typically include the sourcing and production of primary material and further processing of the product. It can also include transport, waste streams, and consumed end-use products.

Like most studies, the validity of the final result depends on the quality of the inputs. Therefore, when conducting an LCA, it’s important to make sure you capture all the relevant processes. For a product which incorporates aluminium, this is where Innoval excels. Our specialist aluminium industry knowledge, combined with the latest Life Cycle Assessment software (GaBi), means we’re perfectly placed to offer reliable and independent Life Cycle Assessments to the aluminium industry.

AlCircle: What innovative and trendsetting solution have you worked on to help  the aluminium industry grow sustainably?

Prof. Mike Clinch: At Innoval, we believe innovation is a key in positioning aluminium as the material of choice in the circular economy. We’re involved in many collaborative R&D programmes, many of which focus on technologies to reduce environmental impact.

Currently, there is a lot of development work focused on the design of aluminium battery enclosures for electric vehicles. One such project concluded recently is Aluminium for Ultra Low Emission Vehicles (Al-ULEV) this Innovate UK-funded project is one of the many collaborative research projects we’ve worked on over the last 19 years. The Al-ULEV project, which focused on the development of prototype battery enclosures and vehicle integration systems, uses predominantly extruded components. The advances from this project will help OEMs to achieve their vehicle and battery weight reduction and performance targets. Furthermore, they will allow the manufacture of lighter, safer vehicles with zero emissions at a lower cost. The Al-ULEV project consortium consisted of Constellium (lead partner), Gordon Murray Design, Brunel University (BCAST) and Innoval.

Innoval has long advocated for sustainability initiatives through our work on technology development for closed loop recycling in automotive, automotive lightweighting, and enhanced battery box design, to name just a few. There are also considerable opportunities within the packaging and construction sectors. We are also proud to be part of Danieli Group which is committed to working in line with the provisions of the Paris Climate Agreement. Danieli continues to participate in the “Corporate Social Responsibility” qualification procedure on the Ecovadis platform.

AlCircle: Could you please share one of your most successful and trendsetting case studies related to aluminium rolling processes?

Prof. Mike Clinch: We’re not able to share information on individual projects without prior approval from our clients. However, there are many case studies available to read on our website (www.innovaltec.com).

What I can say is that our rolling and finishing expertise often brings a new perspective to our clients’ operations. If clients want to improve their rolling or finishing operations, there are many ways in which we can help them. For example, if they have a problem with mill vibration, we can help solve it and improve the flatness and gauge variation of sheet products. Our innovative process models can design spray cooling systems for optimum performance, and they can reduce the time and energy consumption of heating cycles.

Our Aluminium Rolling Technology Course is the only rolling course specifically for aluminium. It

covers all the key aspects of hot and cold rolling of aluminium flat products. We’re especially excited about the next course in December as it will be the first in-person rolling course we’ve held since 2019! We will have engineers from twelve different rolling companies coming to Banbury, UK, for this course.

AlCircle: What innovative technology have you recently invented to support aluminium rolling in the automotive sector?

Prof. Mike Clinch: Surface cleanliness is critical to the performance of many aluminium products. This is especially true for automotive sheet where surface cleanliness influences the effectiveness of the pre-treatment and ultimately the adhesion of the final coating, be it adhesive or paint. Therefore, it’s vitally important for a sheet supplier to be able to measure how clean their sheet surface is after it comes off the continuous cleaning and pretreatment line.

Dr Junjie Wang, Innoval’s Technical Manager for Surface Science, does a lot of work with our clients who supply automotive sheet. Some of his work involves evaluating the effectiveness of cleaning and pre-treatment systems and recommending changes to processing parameters to produce the best surface at the fastest line speed. As part of his work, Junjie developed a new way to measure the surface cleanliness of aluminium sheet in a production environment.

The key purpose of cleaning is to remove an active disturbed layer from the aluminium sheet surfaces. The disturbed layer is present in all rolled aluminium sheet. The technique Junjie uses exploits the optical characteristics of this layer. The disturbed layer reduces the reflectivity of the sheet surface to visible light, particularly in the short wavelength range. As the surface is cleaned and the disturbed layer removed, the reflectivity (measured as total reflectance, TR) increases.

Junjie’s method is relatively cheap to set-up, requires little training and produces readings in a matter of seconds. We’d be happy to describe it in more detail to anyone who’s interested.