- Advanced management of industrial waste
- Air quality and control of emissions
- Energy and resource efficiency
Metalworking companies face the challenge of improving efficiency while reducing the environmental impact of their production processes. Sustainability is a strategic factor in strengthening industrial competitiveness and resilience, beyond simply meeting regulatory requirements.
Energy and raw material consumption, waste generation, and emissions are closely linked to manufacturing process performance. Analyzing these factors helps identify opportunities to optimize resource use, reduce inefficiencies, and improve both production performance and environmental outcomes. There is also a need to move toward cleaner processes that minimize impacts on ecosystems and help protect human health.
At AZTERLAN, we research and develop technological solutions to advance more efficient and sustainable industrial processes. Our work focuses on reducing resource and fossil fuel consumption, promoting material circularity, and preventing harmful and polluting emissions.
We research solutions to reduce waste generation, recover materials, and valorize industrial by-products. Our work includes material characterization, regeneration, and reuse, as well as developing new ways to reintegrate secondary materials into production processes. The goal is to preserve resource value, reduce the need for primary raw materials, and improve material efficiency.
- Critical Raw Materials (CRMs)
- New valorization Pathways.
- Waste streams sorting and classification.
- Strategies to minimize waste generation.
We study the sources and behavior of emissions and pollutants associated with industrial processes. Identifying and characterizing these pollutants helps us better understand how they are generated and develop solutions to prevent or reduce them. This work helps minimize the environmental impact of industrial activity and workers’ exposure to harmful substances.
- Assessment and identification of pollution sources in ambient and indoor air, including emissions, noise, and odors.
- Development of improvement proposals and implementation of solutions.
We develop solutions to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from metalworking processes. We investigate approaches to optimize thermal cycles, recover waste heat, and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, taking into account the metallurgical, production, and economic requirements of each process.
- Waste heat recovery in industrial facilities.
- New thermal energy storage materials, including metallic phase-change materials (PCMs) and inorganic solids.
We assess the environmental, social, and economic impacts of products and processes throughout their life cycles. We apply assessment methodologies to compare alternatives, identify key impact drivers, and inform decisions on design, material selection, and manufacturing to support more sustainable solutions.
- Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
- Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA)
- Life Cycle Cost (LCC)
- Sampling and characterization of waste streams, including gases, particulate matter, solid waste, and wastewater.
- Environmental assessments and audits.
- Technical, environmental, and economic assessment of processes and products.
- Optimization of material and energy consumption.
- Prevention and minimization of emissions and discharges through process and product improvements.
- Waste heat recovery and energy resource utilization.
- Internal recycling and reuse of alloys, refractory materials, foundry sands, and other materials.
- Technologies for emissions treatment and waste valorization.
- Substitution of hazardous or polluting materials.
- Development of eco-design models and procedures.
- Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), and Life Cycle Costing (LCC).
- Industrial symbiosis solutions to improve resource utilization.
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«Our work is aimed at mastering the physics and the chemistry that govern the behavior of metallic alloys, the phenomena that take place during manufacturing processes and the conditions that affect the useful life of metallic components.
We rethink metallurgy to develop more effective, efficient and sustainable manufacturing processes that favor the manufacture of components with enhanced properties and that open up new fields of application».
