Das Projekt "Comparison of Conservation Materials and Strategies for Sustainable Exploitation of Immovable Industrial Cultural Heritage made of Iron and Steel (CONSIST)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Fraunhofer-Institut für Silicatforschung (ISC) durchgeführt. Closed down, but outstanding examples of industrial monuments have to be considered as important witnesses of our culture. New preservation strategies are requested for large outdoor monuments, being heavily corroded and mechanically endangered. The project will concentrate on the comparative testing of established traditional, modern, and within the project developed new surface conservation materials and preservation strategies for industrial heritage made of iron and steel. The laboratory tests will require the application of suitable transparent compounds like traditional oils and waxes, comparing them with micro-crystalline waxes, modern resins like acrylics or epoxy-functionalised lacquers, and newly developed coatings such as the combination of isocyanato-based polyacylate dispersions (as silanes) and hybrid polymeric sols, leading to advanced hybrid systems by nano-scaled sol-gel preparation techniques. Room-temperature curing will be obligatory for its applications. The influence of different degrees of surface cleaning on the protective effect of the coatings will be specified. The conservation material development will respect standards set by conservation ethics, focussing on the reversibility and re-treatability of transparent coatings. The newly developed systems will be water-based and thus provide an alternative to solvent-based lacquers and natural resins available so far. Pilot applications of the most promising coatings on three selected objects in Ireland, Poland, and Germany will be performed to compare the advantages of the new materials with the commercially available systems. Management concepts for industrial heritage sites will be established to demonstrate the potential for economic growth through the application of new methodologies. The project team consists of five contractors and two subcontractors, including research institutes, universities, public authorities and a strong participation of SMEs.