Hi-tech Aircraft Coating Could Cut Carbon Emissions

SCOTTISH inventors have developed a way to reduce the airline industry's carbon footprint by making paint lighter.

The Edinburgh-based scientists' hi-tech coating could cut the CO 2 emissions of an average commercial aircraft by around 50,000kg each year, according to one report based on estimates from airlines.

The development team is using microsphere technology, which can reduce the weight of some pigments currently used by up to 75per cent.

Now Microsphere Technology Ltd, the company behind the invention, has linked with a Swedish engineering firm, Trelleborg Engineered Systems, to prepare the paint for the market.

The firm, based at Pentlands Science Park on the outskirts of Edinburgh, said that coating a single large aircraft requires hundreds of kilograms of paint, and "given that these aircraft also burn prodigious amounts of fuel, even modest savings in the weight of paint on the surface will have considerable knock-on effect on fuel consumption".

Tom Johnston, the company's operations director, said: "The technology is specifically aimed at weight reduction of aircraft paints, with the subsequent advantage of significant savings in fuel consumption and carbon foot-printing.

"The Trelleborg Group view the low density white pigments as a radically new approach to aerospace and automotive paint production."

Microspheres are spherical particles smaller than pollen spores that are ncreasingly being used in a variety of technologies. They come in a variety of different forms and can be man-made or mined from natural sources.

Microspheres are already present in a wide range of consumer products, including many cosmetics, paints, fillers, insulators, adhesives and plastics. Microsphere Technology Ltd uses hollow glass microspheres as a platform on which to layer other materials such as metals and pigments Lennart Johannson, of Trelleborg Engineered Systems, said: "To combine both companies' technologies and application know-how opens up new interesting opportunities in this exciting market."