Fully Funded M2A EngD Scholarship: Advanced Oil Application and Wettability of Tinplate and ECCS

Start date: October 2019

Supervisor: Dr E Jewell and Mr M Litz

Sponsoring company: TATA Steel Packaging

Tata Steel is a major steel manufacturing company in both Europe and the UK, having a portfolio comprising automotive, engineering and packaging steels.

The packaging production volume of 1.2 million tonne is manufactured in The Netherlands, Wales and Belgium. Packaging Steel is a highly demanding market with clean, highly formable steel and exceptional surface properties. TATA Steel Packaging (TSP) sells its product to the major packaging producers of Europe, UK, and US. These customers use lacquer application systems to give their cans corrosion protection and the desired surface appearance. TSP use a small amount of oil on the tinplate to prevent scratching during cutting and processing. However, this oil applied incorrectly, can result in problems during the lacquering process at the customer. In such cases the surface tension of the tinplate is not compatible with the lacquer / solvent system.

The Research Engineer will:

- Identify and test technologies which form oil droplets with a more uniform size distribution.
- Identify and test technologies which measure oil distribution during forming and once applied to the strip.
- Find correlation between surface tension / surface (free Gibbs) energy / wettability and droplet size distribution.
- Propose new oils that improve wettability in the light of new lacquer systems, whilst securing scratch resistance and edibility.