Tecnargilla presents award for ceramic sector research

Tecnargilla 2012 hosted the first edition of the Ceramic TTD Award, set up to honour the best and most innovative ceramic sector research projects that can be adopted at an industrial level.

The award is part of the Technology Transfer Day project, an initiative sponsored by Acimac and CNR to bring together requests and offers for innovation and technology in the ceramic sector. The TTD promotes contact between the worlds of research and industry, first on the web and then in a dedicated area at Tecnargilla, to discuss the results of research projects and new innovative proposals. The ultimate goal is to develop business-oriented collaborations, technological partnerships and joint-ventures and to implement research and study projects in progress.

These activities culminated in the Ceramic TTD conference held on 27 September at Tecnargilla, which discussed the current state of research in Italy and presented the awards for the three best technological proposals submitted.

First prize went to the project entitled "Automatic density control of a green ceramic tile produced by pressing", submitted by Gustavo Mallol from the Instituto de Tecnología Cerámica (ITC). The Spanish research centre developed an innovative system for automatically controlling the pressing process in the ceramic industry. Innovative features include the absence of mercury and the fact that the green density of ceramic tiles is maintained constant by means of online measurements of the moisture content of powders.

In second place was a team from the University of Trento, Department of Mechanical and Structural Engineering, led by Prof. Davide Bigoni, with the proposal "Modelling, numerical simulation and optimisation of the ceramic powder forming process".

Third prize was won by Antonio Maccari from Macs Tech srl with "Keracromia®: how to optimise digital production in the ceramic industry".

For detailed information on the research projects: http://www.ceramicttd.it.