Energy and environment, challenges and driving forces for the future heat treatment and surface engineering

With the entry of the 21^st century, energy and environment become deeply concerned social issues. More and more people, enterprises, and politicians realise that with the industrial and civil development and increasing desire for energy during the last centuries energy becomes expensive. The ground reason is that natural resources which mankind so far conventionally consumed, such as fossil fuels, are limited. The fact coming along with this energy problem is that our life basis, the environment, becomes degenerated, and might be unlivable for our future generations. Immediate and appropriate measures must be undertaken.

Heat treatment (HT) and surface engineering (SE) processes may deliver, from the prospect of energy and environment, double impact. With these processes the microstructure of materials can be deliberately changed for specific purposes, such as improving mechanical properties, extending service life of mechanical parts, developing potential performance of materials, and improving the overall performance of the whole machines. Therefore, adequate HT and SE processes are significantly beneficial to overall energy efficiency of the society. On the other hand, HT and SE are often high energy consuming processes. As with other branches of industry the current requirements on energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emission are challenging to the HT and SE industry.

This issue presents a Global 21 overview¹ on one important industrial branch connected to the oil and gas exploration, which is heavily dependent on heat treatment and surface engineering. The paper has clearly demonstrated with statistical data how stabilising and improving product quality as the result of the improvement of scientific, technical and management level of HT during the last decade in the petroleum machinery manufacturing industry in China has raised the equipment utilisation rate and reduced the energy consumption. We hope it may trigger a series of studies on various important industrial branches.

In general, any scientific achievements in materials science in HT and SE, as well as technical innovations and upgrading in process efficiency, energy efficiency, furnace design and construction, measurement and process control, etc. contribute to the solution of energy-environment problems. In this relatively ‘old’ field of HT, many interesting and practically important effects still need to be reinvestigated and clarified, such as those presented in the paper by Dong and Zhu².

Energy and environment are, from the optimistic viewpoint, the external driving forces for the future of HT and SE. No doubt, clean energy generation and supply systems require not only upgrading of conventional HT and SE, but also new materials and methods for their processes. The energy transition may not be realised without innovation of new types of steels and highly developed steel processing. For example, the offshore wind power station demands high corrosion resistant steels for its foundations and towers. The efficiency of thermal power plant may be much improved when its pressure and temperature are raised, which may only be possible with new high-performance alloys.

Recently the 2^nd International Conference on Energy and the Future of Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering³ organised by Chinese Heat Treatment Society (CHTS) took place in Beijing. Following its predecessors the conference addresses the main themes of energy management in HT and SE and the HT and SE in the manufacture of clean energy generation and supply systems. In the coming IHTSE issues we will introduce selectively most interesting papers to our readers.