OREANDA-NEWS. July 04, 2011. The project of TSNIITMASH OJSC (a machine engineering branch of Rosatom State Corporation) on creation of the universal method of industrial metal products surface hardening has become the Gran Prix winner of the “Contest of the Russian Innovations”.

The ceremony of the contest laureate announcement was held on Wednesday as a part of “The Forum of Russian Innovations”.

The method of metal products reinforcement by means of the so-called nanocarbonitration allows reinforcement of the surface of the details used in the industry.

Such technology of reinforce ment allows increasing the solidness of metal products’ surfaces from 5 to 15 times, improve the endurance up to 20 times and reduce the friction coefficient up to seven times, as Head of TSNIITMASH laboratory Sergey Tsikh has explained to RIA News.

“The surfaces reinforced by this way are able to work at large contact pressures even without lubricant”, Tsikh underlined.

This technology could be used in any branch, from food industry to space, as the head of the laboratory has explained. “This is already a really working technology”, Tsikh said, having underlined that the method has been already used in the nuclear power industry and has passed the appropriate certification.

“Now we are in need of investments to create the equipment in the industrial variant, in order to spread it over the entire Russia, and now it exists in single samples”, Tsikh said.

TSNIITMASH is the developer and keeper of specifications for steel and welding consumables for reactors vessels, steam generators, pressure compensators, SAOZ (emergency core cooling system) accumulators, main circulation pumps, vessel internals of stainless steel and a number of other most important equipment elements, including turbines and conduct pipes, both for VVER-1000 and NPP-2006.