<p>Powder coating plays a key role in the manufacturing process of many metallic consumer items. Corona charging polymeric powder coating allows high implementable automation, low cost, and lower environmental impact than solvent-based polymeric coating. However, there are still some critical issues regarding thickness control and coating compactness that led the process to have low quality rates and consequent waste of resources and materials. In this paper, a study is presented for the first time in the literature regarding the replacement of air used as carrier gas with gaseous nitrogen obtained by reverse osmosis to improve the thickness control and quality of powder coatings. Specifically, we used the coating plant of a case study company, equipped with a N₂ enrichment machine, conventionally used for liquid spray coating. The study shows an improvement in the compactness of the coating and a 35% reduction in roughness due to a drop in the back-ionization effect due to the use of gaseous nitrogen. As a result, the coatings obtained with the proposed set-up achieved a 30% improvement in hardness and wear resistance. The use of N₂ as a carrier gas resulted in a 95% quality rate compared to 55% compressed air. In addition, the coating of samples with complex geometry was performed with remarkable uniformity of thickness. As an outcome, it was possible to achieve a reduction in the environmental impact of the coating process by 43% compared to the conventional process.</p> Graphical abstract <p></p>