How we’re helping the automotive and steel industry achieve its sustainability goals

Electric cars are officially cool these days – and with charging points springing up in neighborhoods from Liuzhou to London, it’s impossible to ignore the transformation of the automotive industry.

Efficiency: a crucial step toward sustainability

But as the case for electric looks more conclusive every year, the focus of change is shifting away from fuel and toward the manufacturing process itself. Sustainable materials production is the next big step along the path to a net-zero economy – and it’s a lot more accessible than it might sound!

Making a process more efficient can offer great benefits in cost reduction as well as sustainability. This is our specialty at Malvern Panalytical. To improve steel galvannealing, the process used to strengthen and protect steel for use in vehicle manufacturing, we developed on-line X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD).

What is galvannealing?

Steel galvannealing is more energy-intensive than galvanizing, as the metal goes through a second round of treatment at high temperatures in an annealing oven to create an alloy. This produces a more durable product that’s easier to weld and paint – so it’s easy to see why this technique is popular in automotive manufacturing! Galvannealed steel has now been a standard industry material for decades.

But in order to produce the highest quality finish, the process needs to be tightly controlled. Under- and over-alloying both result in performance issues, as either too much or too little of the surface crystalline structure is left in the Fe/Zn alloy layers. This also leads to wasted materials and energy.

Until now, this wasn’t something you could usually monitor without sampling in the lab. Most monitoring solutions were off-line and very slow – up to 8 hours per sample, in fact! That’s a lot of down-time for a high-volume production process.

An industry-first solution

The on-line XRD solves this problem by giving continuous measurements and results in real time. On-line XRD gives feedback on crystallographic phase composition and layer thickness, both key parameters in the galvannealing process. Getting this information without sampling delay leads to less waste and lower energy consumption overall, and lab resources can be redeployed elsewhere, leading to further efficiency gains.

Another big advantage? It significantly lowers process errors. By taking continuous measurements, the risk of over-correcting due to an unrepresentative sample is almost eliminated – as is the potential for human error during analysis.

All these efficiencies result in saved time and saved costs, along with a lower environmental impact.

Manufacture the future today

So, next time you’re looking for a new car, consider how sustainable its manufacturing was as well as its fuel type! And if you’re a manufacturer looking for a way to upgrade your galvannealing processes, become more efficient and lower your costs, we can help – just ask our experts how.

To talk about how Malvern Panalytical can future-proof your processes, contact us below or check our specialized metals hub here.