Project

AccelWater’s project main objective is to optimize freshwater water consumption in the food and beverage industry under a water-waste-energy nexus by introducing beyond state-of-the-art water reclaiming, reusing and Artificial Intelligence enabled monitoring and control technologies. Thus the use of reclaimed water in the manufacturing processes of food and beverages will become possible.

The goal of ADIR is to demonstrate the feasibility of a key technology for next generation urban mining. An automated disassembly of electronic equipment will be worked out to separate and recover valuable materials. The concept is based on image processing, robotic handling, pulsed power technology, 3D laser measurement, real-time laser material identification (to detect materials), laser processing (to access components, to selectively unsolder these; to cut off parts of a printed circuit board), and automatic separation into different sorting fractions. A machine concept will be worked out being capable to selectively disassemble printed circuit boards and mobile phones with short cycle times to gain sorting fractions containing high amounts of valuable materials. Examples are those materials with high economic importance and significant supply risk such as tantalum, rare earth elements, germanium, cobalt, palladium, gallium and tungsten..

The AI-CUBE project aims to enhance the understanding of digital technologies related to Artificial Intelligence and Big Data applied in process industries for eight SPIRE industrial sectors. AI-CUBE will define eight roadmaps, one for each SPIRE sector, highlighting practical recommendations on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data (BD) business cases that will serve as guidance for researchers, managers, and operators.

Ashes from the incineration of municipal solid waste, biomass and sewage sludge are currently underutilized and a part of them ends up in landfills. With them, a significant number of metals, nutrients, rare earth elements and industrially valuable minerals contained in the ashes are lost as well. The AshCycle project will provide tools for reducing the waste generation by developing new utilization possibilities.

The water sector in coastal areas is facing challenges such as water scarcity and increasing water demands due to climate change or economic/ population growth. This leads to overexploitation of resources, quality deterioration and regional imbalances in water availability. To tackle these challenges, the B-WaterSmart project is developing and demonstrating smart technologies and circular economy approaches.

BAMBOO aims at developing new technologies addressing energy and resource efficiency challenges in 4 intensive industries (steel, petrochemical, minerals and pulp and paper). BAMBOO will scale up promising technologies to be adapted, tested and validated under real production conditions focus on three main innovation pillars: waste heat recovery, electrical flexibility and waste streams valorisation. These technologies include industrial heat pumps, Organic Rankine Cycles, combustion monitoring and control devices, improved burners and hybrid processes using energy from different carriers (waste heat, steam and electricity) for upgrading solid biofuels. These activities will be supported by quantitative Life Cycle Assessments.

C2FUEL project aims to develop energy-efficient, economically and environmentally viable CO2 conversion technologies for the displacement of fossils fuels emission through a concept of industrial symbiosis between carbon intensive industries, power production, and local economy. This concept will be demonstrated at Dunkirk between DK6 combined cycle power plant, Arcelor Mittal steel factory and one of the major European harbor, a solid showcase for future replication.

The main vision of CABRISS project is to develop a circular economy mainly for the photovoltaic, but also for electronic and glass industry. It will consist in the implementation of: (i) recycling technologies to recover In, Ag and Si for the sustainable PV technology and other applications; (ii) a solar cell processing roadmap, which will use Si waste for the high throughput, cost-effective manufacturing of hybrid Si based solar cells and will demonstrate the possibility for the re-usability and recyclability at the end of life of key PV materials. The developed Si solar cells will have the specificity to have a low environmental impact by the implementation of low carbon footprint technologies and as a consequence, the technology will present a low energy payback (about 1 year).

Carbon4Minerals develops innovative technologies for CO₂ capture and use in the production of carbon-negative minerals for high-value construction products, with the potential to reduce CO₂ emissions by 80% - 135% compared to cement-based reference materials. Thus Carbon4Minerals supports climate mitigation while safeguarding the competitiveness of European industry. The cement industry (responsible for 6-8% of global GHG emissions) is looking for alternative materials to replace Portland clinker, to reduce the enormous amounts of CO₂ emitted during the calcination of limestone. This need is particularly dire in view of the steel industry’s transition to H2-based DRI-EAF, thereby phasing out blast furnace slag as cement replacement.

The process industries and other crude oil consuming sectors are heavily dependent on fossil inputs for both carbon feedstock and energy, with the consequential CO2 emission problems and import dependency as a result. To be prepared for the future, they are seeking alternative carbon sources to replace traditional fossil fuels. CarbonNext aims to evaluate the potential use of CO2/CO and non-conventional fossil natural resources as feedstock for the process industry in Europe.

CEM-WAVE aims at validating an innovative Microwave-assisted Chemical Vapour Infiltration technology to produce Ceramic Matrix Composites. Promising a significant reduction in production costs, CEM-WAVE answers the need for high-performance materials, withstanding the fluctuating and extreme manufacturing conditions created by the growing use of renewable energy sources in heavy industry.

CIRC-PACK project aims at more sustainable, efficient, competitive, less fossil fuel dependence, integrated and interconnected plastic packaging value chain. To this end, three case studies will work in developing, testing and validating better system-wide economic and environmental outcomes by i) decoupling the chain from fossil feedstocks, (ii) reducing the negative environmental impact of plastic packaging; and (iii) creating an effective after-use plastics economy. All in all, the work will be supported by non-technological analysis and advanced methodological analysis (including circular economy and industrial symbiosis principles) which will trigger a broadly deployment of the tested solutions. CIRC-PACK project will provide breakthrough biodegradable plastics using alternative biobased raw materials, which will have an instrumental role to play in the subsequence steps of the plastic value chain. In addition, eco-design packaging for improving and end-of-like multilayer and multicomponent packaging will be technologically advanced and adapted also to the new materials produced. Thus these developments will also contribute with a great impact in the packaging footprint, and increasing the biobased content and using compostable materials. Lastly, a multi-sectorial cascaded approach along plastic packaging value chain will be applied with critical impacts in other value chains beyond the targeted plastic packaging value chain. The overall outcome of the project will facilitate the transition from the current linear plastic packaging value chain to circular economy principles.

The CO2EXIDE project aims at the development of a technology for the conversion of bio-based carbon dioxide into industrially relevant chemicals. In line with the energy turnaround the underlying electrochemical process uses renewable energy from renewable sources. Operating at low temperatures and pressures, the reactions will forecast significant improvements in energy and resource efficiency combined with an enormous reduction of GHG emissions.

The project will demonstrate an innovative approach for advanced digitisation & intelligent management of the process industries. A novel vision to data monitoring and analysis will be developed, to make the most of the latest developments on advanced analytics and cognitive reasoning, coupled with a disruptive use of the digital twin concept to improve production plants operation performance.

To integrate solar energy into supercritical CO2 Brayton power cycles. Concentrated solar radiation will be absorbed and stored in solid particles and the heat transferred to the sCO2. The participants will produce, test, model and validate novel particle and alloy combinations that meet the extreme operating conditions. A particle-sCO2 heat exchanger will be validated in a relevant environment.

The goal of CoPro is to develop and to demonstrate methods and tools for process monitoring and optimal dynamic planning, scheduling and control of plants, industrial sites and clusters under dynamic market conditions.

What if we were able to use CO₂ and H₂ from renewable energy sources as fuel and chemical feedstocks, and thus decrease CO₂ emissions and displace fossil fuels at the same time? COZMOS will develop an energy-efficient and environmentally and economically viable conversion of CO₂ to fuels and high added value chemicals via an innovative, cost effective catalyst, reactor and process. The concept will combine the sequential reactions of CO₂ hydrogenation to methanol and methanol to C₃ hydrocarbons, exploiting Le Chatelier's principle to overcome low equilibrium product yields of methanol. Complete conversion of CO₂ to a 85 % yield of C₃ hydrocarbons will be achieved by using an optimised bifunctional catalyst within a single reactor. The optimised catalyst will allow the combined reactions, that currently run at disparate temperatures and pressures, to operate in a temperature/pressure "sweet spot", which will reduce infrastructure and provide energy and production cost savings. The concept will allow tunable production of propane, an easily stored fuel used for heating, cooking and transportation, and the more valuable product propene, a base chemical primarily polymerised to lightweight plastics but also a starting point for a number of other industrially relevant chemicals, depending on location, amount of available renewable energy and economic needs. The integrated technology will be demonstrated at TRL5 on off-gases from the energy intensive steel and refinery industries. Markets for both propane and propene are expected to grow in the coming years, such that the COZMOS technology will contribute to achieving a Circular Economy and diversified economic base in carbon-intensive regions.
Throughout the whole value chain development, emphasis will be placed on risk-mitigation pathways and strong industrial involvement, LCA and techno-economic analysis to maximise further exploitation and industrialisation of the results. Specific attention will be paid to social acceptance, including analysis of stakeholder and end-user interests.

Nowadays, Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)-based waste streams are mainly treated by means of mechanical processes, aimed at recovering plastic solid waste (PSW) for re-use; because of the degradation and heterogeneity of PSW, only single-polymer plastics can be processed, thus excluding all the more complex and contaminated waste. Quality is the main issue when dealing with mechanically recycled products, which, in the end, could just be burned or land field disposed.

Chemical processing could be considered, instead, for complete recovering of the molecules constituting the polymer (which would be then ready to be used to produce virgin PET) but, up until now, de-polymerization approaches have not been widely adopted within industrial practice due to their inability of working continuously, their very high reaction times and, in the end, inability to achieve economic return of investment.

The value chain of PET is quite complex, and involves several steps that already links in cross-sectorial interactions multiple companies across the European and worldwide market. It is at the end of that life cycle that DEMETO proposes its innovative technology: the first feasible and sustainable (economically, environmentally and socially) industrial application of chemical treatment for reuse of PET plastics waste streams. Thanks to a process intensifying approach based on innovative usage of microwave radiations, DEMETO’s recycling technology will provide an indefinite life to PET, allowing to come back to its composing elements (Ethylene Glycol, EG, and Terephtalic Acid, PTA) without degrading the materials and, consequently, paving the way for a disruptive, large-scale circular economy for plastic products.

DigInTraCE aims to provide a cross sectoral, from sensing to sorting, from materials to products, digitalisation solution and propose a dynamic digital product passport scheme as landmark and in parallel develop and combine these digital with process and material innovations, to increase waste reduction, improve use of secondary raw materials, and thus lead to circular and low emission value chains. 

The DREAM project aims to design, develop and demonstrate a radically improved architecture for ceramic industrial furnaces, characterised by optimised energy consumption, reduced emissions, and lower operating costs compared to currently available technological solutions.

ECCO proposes a novel solution for the curing oven operation, which can not only drastically increase the compactness and energetic efficiency of the system, but leads to an increased production flexibility due to a fuel-flexible, modular and potentially energetically self-sustainable process.

GHG emissions reduction policies to mitigate the alarming climate change can impact carbon-intensive industrial sectors, leading to loss of employment and competitiveness. Current multistage CCU technologies using renewable electricity to yield fuels suffer from low energy efficiency and require large CAPEX.   eCOCO2 combines smart molecular catalysis and process intensification to bring out a novel efficient, flexible and scalable CCU technology. The project aims to set up a CO2 conversion process using renewable electricity and water steam to directly produce synthetic jet fuels with balanced hydrocarbon distribution (paraffin, olefins and aromatics) to meet the stringent specifications in aviation.   The CO2 converter consists of a tailor-made multifunctional catalyst integrated in a co-ionic electrochemical cell that enables to in-situ realise electrolysis and water removal from hydrocarbon synthesis reaction. This intensified process can lead to breakthrough product yield and efficiency for chemical energy storage from electricity, specifically CO2 per-pass conversion > 85%, energy efficiency > 85% and net specific demand < 6 MWh/t CO2. In addition, the process is compact, modular –quickly scalable- and flexible, thus, process operation and economics can be adjusted to renewable energy fluctuations. As a result, this technology will enable to store more energy per processed CO2 molecule and therefore to reduce GHG emissions per jet fuel tone produced from electricity at a substantial higher level. eCOCO2 aims to demonstrate the technology (TRL-5) by producing > 250 g of jet fuel per day in an existing modular prototype rig that integrates 18 tubular intensified electrochemical reactors. Studies on societal perception and acceptance will be carried out across several European regions.   The consortium counts on academic partners with the highest world-wide excellence and exceptional industrial partners with three major actors in the most CO2-emmiting sectors.

EMB3Rs aim to develop an excess HC (Heat/Cold) (re)use matching platform for industry and end users.

The EPOS project brings together 5 global process industries from 5 key relevant sectors: steel, cement, chemicals, minerals and engineering. EPOS's main objective is to enable cross-sectorial Industrial Symbiosis and provide a wide range of technological and organisational options for making business and operations more efficient, more cost-effective, more competitive and more sustainable across process sectors.

EuReComp is an EU funded collaborative research project with a strong focus on circularity, set out to provide sustainable methods towards recycling and reuse of composite materials, coming from components used in various industries, such as aeronautics and wind energy. 

Glass and carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites (GFRP and CFRP) are increasingly used as structural materials in many manufacturing sectors like transport, constructions and energy due to their better lightweight and corrosion resistance compared to metals. Composite recycling is a challenging task. Although mechanical grinding and pyrolysis reached a quite high TRL, landfilling of EoL composites is still widespread since no significant added value in the re-use and remanufacturing of composites is demonstrated. The FiberEUse project aims at integrating in a holistic approach different innovation actions aimed at enhancing the profitability of composite recycling and reuse in value-added products. The project is based on the realization of three macro use-cases, further detailed in eight demonstrators: Use-case 1: Mechanical recycling of short GFRP and re-use in added-value customized applications, including furniture, sport and creative products. Emerging manufacturing technologies like UV-assisted 3D-printing and metallization by Physical Vapor Deposition will be used. Use-case 2: Thermal recycling of long fibers (glass and carbon) and re-use in high-tech, high-resistance applications. The input product will be EoL wind turbine and aerospace components. The re-use of composites in automotive (aesthetical and structural components) and building will be demonstrated by applying controlled pyrolysis and custom remanufacturing. Use-case 3: Inspection, repair and remanufacturing for EoL CFRP products in high-tech applications. Adaptive design and manufacturing criteria will be implemented to allow for a complete circular economy demonstration in the automotive sector. Through new cloud-based ICT solutions for value-chain integration, scouting of new markets, analysis of legislation barriers, life cycle assessment for different reverse logistic options, FiberEUse will support industry in the transition to a circular economy model for composites.

The overall objective of FISSAC project is to develop and demonstrate a new paradigm built on an innovative industrial symbiosis model towards a zero waste approach in the resource intensive industries of the construction value chain, tackling harmonized technological and non-technological requirements, leading to material closed-loop processes and moving to a circular economy.

FLEXIndustries builds on a holistic approach to design and deploy energy efficiency measures and process flexibility methods across 7 sectors of the energy intensive industries (automotive, biofuels, polymers, steel, pulp & paper, pharmaceuticals, cement). The project also aims to ensure these solutions connect seamlessly with electrical and heating networks.

The equipment currently used in energy-intensive industries is vulnerable to corrosion and erosion as well as brittle fractures/cracking from the gas collection and kiln operations. Improvement of this equipment, and future equipment planned to be installed in these industries for the implementation of CO2-emission reduction technologies, is essential to increase production efficiency, component lifetime and reduce environmental impact. With this in mind, the EU-funded FORGE project aims to provide the energy intensive industries with coatings solutions based on Compositionally Complex Materials and multiple Spraying Techniques.

The FRIENDSHIP project aims to demonstrate that solar heat can be a reliable, user-friendly, high quality and cost-effective resource to meet the heat requirements for industrial sectors such as Textile, Plastics, Wood, Metal and Chemicals. The project will rely on the expertise of a consortium including research centres, industry leaders, as well as technology and heat suppliers.

H2GLASS aims to create the technology stack that glass manufacturers need to (a) realize 100% H2 combustion in their production facilities, (b) ensure the required product quality, and (c) manage this safely. H2GLASS will address the challenges related to NOx emissions and high flame propagation speed, process efficiency, and supply of H2 for on-site demonstrations. 

The main objective of the HIPERMAT project is to empower future low carbon technologies, like hot stamping, by incorporating high performance materials and components in processing furnaces. That way, environmental impact reduction is enhanced acting over the whole value chain, from furnace component manufacturers to O.E.M., including furnace constructors  and automotive component providers.

The main objective of HyInHeat is the integration of hydrogen as fuel for high temperature heating processes in the energy intensive industries. While some of the equipment is already presented as hydrogen-ready, the integration of hydrogen combustion in heating processes still needs adoption and redesign of infrastructure, equipment and the process itself.

The HyperCOG project aims to demonstrate that cyber-physical systems and data analytics can be used to drive transformation within the European process industry, while improving efficiency and competitiveness by harnessing the power of data. HyperCOG will demonstrate the potential of these technologies and will evaluate their replicability and transferability to different industrial sectors.

IbD® will create a holistic platform for facilitating process intensification in processes in which solids are an intrinsic part, the cornerstone of which will be an intensified-by-design® (IbD). Through five IbD®- enabled industrial process intensification case studies, the project will develop and upgrade methods for the handling of solids in continuous production units based, on the one hand, on the intensification of currently existing processes and, on the other hand, through completely new approaches to the processing of solids.

The aim of the ICO2CHEM project is to develop a new production concept for converting waste CO₂ to value added chemicals. The focus is the production of white oils and high molecular weight aliphatic waxes. The technological core of the project consists in the combination of a Reverse Water Gas Shift (RWGS) reactor coupled with an innovative modular Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reactor.

The project is conducted by the joint effort of 6 EU partners: VTT from Finland, Altana, Ineratec, Infraserv, Provadis Hochschule from Germany and Politecnico di Torino from Italy.

IMPRESS will demonstrate and validate a new hybrid biorefinery process for the first time. The aim is to find ways to produce sustainable chemicals and materials.

INCITE aims to propose innovative solutions for the challenging work of controlling and designing the future electrical networks seeking to create a multidisciplinary research space with a complete view of the smart grids control. The main purpose is to expose the Early Stage Researchers to the major problems, theoretical and practical, involved in the control of smart grids.

Indus3Es project focuses on the development and demonstration in real environment of heat recovery in large industrial systems. The Indus3Es project will develop an innovative Absorption Heat Transformer to recover the low temperature waste heat, nowadays rejected from industries, due to the low quality of heat and the currently used technologies. A single effect heat transformer can increase the temperature of approximately 50% of the waste heat by approximately 50K (depending on available heat sink).”

To support emissions reduction in the iron and steel sector, INITIATE will demonstrate industrial symbiosis by converting carbon-rich residual steel gas into valuable products. This TRL7 demonstration project combines the production of N2+H2 and CO2 streams, with innovative ammonia production as a precursor for urea synthesis. Ultimately, INITIATE will develop a commercial deployment roadmap for technology roll-out.

INSPIREWATER demonstrated a holistic approach for water management in the process industry using innovative technology solutions from European companies to increase water and resource efficiency in the process industry.

This project addresses the call topic CE-SPIRE -10-2018: Efficient recycling processes for plastics containing materials.

A method (ISOPREP) is proposed for recycling polypropylene (PP) products into virgin quality PP and hence reusable for the production of the highest grade PP products. The method exploits a novel ionic polymer solvent designed for highly tuned solubility of PP, patented within the partnership, with the key advantages/innovations:
(1) A performance identical to PP resin freshly manufactured from fossil sources
(2) Cost effective compared with producing PP from fossil sources
(3) Reduces the reliance of PP production on fossil resources
(4) Achieves a step reduction on life cycle emissions and energy compared with the use of fossil resources
(5) Is entirely closed loop with negligible loss of solvent per cycle and hence negligible emissions thus non-polluting
(6) The solvent is non-toxic and non-flammable in the process temperature range
(6) Removes dyes, colours and impurities
(7) Prevents sending end of life PP products to landfill and avoids them polluting both land and sea

The overall objective of KaRMA2020 is the industrial exploitation of underutilized waste to obtain added value raw materials for the chemical sector: keratin, bioplastics, flame retardant coatings, non-woven and thermoset biobased resins.

The majority of the CO2 emissions from the production of cement are released directly and unavoidably from the processing of the raw materials. The LEILAC projects are developing a breakthrough technology that aims to enable the cement and lime industries to capture these unavoidable CO2 emissions emitted from the raw limestone at low cost, quickly and efficiently.

The MACBETH breakthrough technology combines catalytic synthesis with the corresponding separation units in a single highly efficient catalytic membrane reactor (CMR). It can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from large volume industrial processes by up to 35 %. In addition, resource and energy efficiency can be increased by up to 70 %, while CAPEX is decreased by up to 50 % and OPEX by up to 80 %.

MC4 (Multi-level Circular Process Chain for Carbon and Glass Fibre Composites) is a European partnership aiming to establish circular approaches for carbon and glass fibre composites. These materials are essential in numerous technical applications, for which their lightweight properties and high performances are especially valued. However, the European carbon and glass fibre value chains need to be optimized on 2 major levels: the environmental and economical efficiencies. Currently, up to 40% of the material is wasted in the production process, and after a lifetime of 15 to 30 years, 98% of the material ends up in a landfill with no hope to be recycled. With a yearly use of about 110.000 tons of carbon fibre composites parts and 4,5 million tons of glass fibre composite, the environmental impact needs to be addressed. In addition to these environmental issues, the current competitive position of Europe in these value chains needs to be improved in order to be less dependent from foreign sources. 80% of the virgin carbon and glass fibre manufacturing is done outside of Europe, and when the manufacturing is done in Europe, its technologies are often licensed from foreign countries. 

<p>To develop an innovative green chemical production technology which contributes significantly to the European objectives of decreasing CO2 emissions and increasing renewable energy usage, thereby improving Europe’s competitiveness in the field.</p>

METAWAVE proposes the introduction of advanced microwave-based heating systems in high-temperature heating processes. Its key outcome is the demonstration of these systems in three industrial sectors (ceramics, asphalt, aluminium) realising superior performance.

The project will introduce and demonstrate a systemic, circular and mobile solution in the South-East Europe (SEE) region to improve the recovery and recycling of construction and demolition waste (CDW). It will combine physical solutions adapted to the ground (a mobile CDW treatment plant) with innovative selective separation and deconstruction technologies in order to scale up both the treatment of CDW and the production and use of recycled construction materials. A cornerstone of the project is the establishment of a territorial hub for CDW through which private, public and scientific key stakeholders, as well as citizens, will cooperate to bring circularity to the construction ecosystem in the region.

MONSOON aims to establish a data-driven methodology to support the identification and exploitation of optimization potentials by applying multi-scale model based predictive controls in production processes.

Plastics bring unprecedented value in terms of convenience, versatility of design and lightweight to European consumers as well as increasingly advanced performances even in high end applications. But only 31% of plastic packaging are currently recycled due to infra-developed technologies or to their unsatisfactory economic viability. This is in fact aggravated by considering plastics as commodity where their economic value is linked to a single use, often not taking into account the potentially generated end of life hurdles. In line with the just released Plastic Strategy for Europe, the time has come to stop the depletion, lanfilling and incineration and shift to a Circular Model in the plastic sector improving the recycling rate but also the value of secondary raw materials from plastic recycling.

The overall objective of NONTOX is to increase the recycling rates of plastics waste containing hazardous substances by developing and optimising recycling processes to produce safe and high quality secondary plastic materials and by optimising the overall process economics by integration.

The OCEAN project aims to develop an integrated process for the production of high-value C2 chemicals from carbon dioxide using electrochemistry.

This will be achieved by:

1) improving and optimizing a TRL5 technology that can convert carbon dioxide to formate, to TRL6. OCEAN will bring this technology just one-step away from commercialization, by demonstrating this technology at the site of an industrial electricity provider, converting 250 g of CO2 per hour at 1.5 kA/m2. The energy efficiency will be improved by coupling the cathodic reaction to the oxidation of glucose at the anode, using a novel technology to match the kinetics of the reactions at both electrodes. The obtained formate can be converted to oxalate.

2) Developing new electrochemical methodologies to further convert formate and oxalate to formic acid and oxalic acid, respectively. Novel salt-splitting will be investigated using bipolar membranes. Again, this allows for direct coupling with an electrosynthesis step at the anode and/or cathode.

3) Developing new electrochemical methodologies by converting oxalic acid to glycolic acid and other high-value C2-products, these will be benchmarked with conventional hydrogenation.

4) Integrating the TRL6 and new (TRL4-5) electrochemical technologies in an industrial process, aimed at the production of high-value C2 products and polymers thereof by developing the process steps needed to produce oxalate, C2 products and polymers.

5) Demonstrating the economic feasibility by performing a market analysis and making a business case and exploitation strategy. Overall, OCEAN aims at addressing the critical elements that are currently hindering new electrochemical processes by targeting high value products that have the corresponding production margin to introduce this technology on the market, lower the power costs by combining oxidation and reduction, and a trans-disciplinary approach that is needed for the introduction of these advanced technologies.

The technologies to be developed in the PERFORM project are directed towards highly efficient and integrated electrochemical systems which substantially improve oxidative chemical transformations based on bio-based feedstocks.

The overall objective of the PLASTICE project is to demonstrate innovative and sustainable routes to close the plastic production loop. 

To dramatically increase the amount of plastics being valorized into new feedstocks, innovative approaches beyond mechanical recycling must be devised. By implementing cutting-edge technologies along the whole recycling value chain and by valorising plastics that are not being separated, the PLASTICE project will valorize a wide range of unsorted plastic and textile waste. By preserving the performance of the valorisation process against feedstock variations and by protecting the products’ quality for their subsequent usage in industrial applications, the goal is to close the loop.

Plastics2Olefins project will design, build, and run a demonstration plant for recycling of unsorted plastic waste at Repsol’s industrial site (Spain), which will be digitalized and run on 100%  renewable (electric) energy.  The project estimates to reduce the lifecycle GHG emissions by 70-80% compared to incineration and existing plastics recycling processes, providing an important contribution to the EU reaching climate neutral by 2050 and set a pathway for commercialization of recycled plastic feedstock replacing fossil feedstocks.

PORTABLECRAC has the purpose of developing an environmentally friendly and economically beneficial technology, to regenerate the activated carbon used in small and large industry for water filtration. Major focus will be in the adaptation of a compact and portable device that will improve the flexibility, operational and investment costs significantly with respect to existing equipment (assuring replicability and up-scaling of the proposed solution).  It will bring a sustainable and long term solution creating a direct and indirect employment in the EU “service-sector”. Its key value proposition is providing a solution with 86% reduction in cost per kg/AC and 4 times reduction in CO₂ emissions

Reduced CO2 emissions and consumption of electrical energy in Mn-alloy production​

Key players of the European process industry from the areas of biotechnology, renewable resources, chemistry, process engineering, equipment supply as well as research organizations collaborate to meet major challenges in white biotechnology and renewables processing via realizing a substantial improvement in downstream processing.

The vision of R-ACES is to support high-potential industrial parks and clusters to become ecoregions that reduce their CO2 emissions by at least 10%. R-ACES will create ecoregions where multiple stakeholders engage in energy cooperation by exchanging heat/cold streams, investing in renewable energy solutions, and/or managing energy streams with the use of the R-ACES toolbox.

ReActiv will create a novel sustainable symbiotic value chain, linking by-products from alumina production to cement production. Bauxite Residue is the main by-product of the alumina sector produced at rates of 6.8 million tonnes per year in the EU, but the recycling rate is currently less than 200,000 tonnes per year. ReActiv will modify the bauxite residue properties, transforming it into reactive material suitable for production of new, low CO2 footprint cement products.

The objective of RECODE is to make cement industry able to contribute to at least 20% reduction of CO2 emissions in the medium to long term. CO2 present in the flue gases of cement industry will be captured and re-used to produce valuable chemicals to improve cement quality, reducing energy intensity of cement production and favoring CO2 capture.

REDOL has been conceived to transform cities into hubs for circularity that implement zero residues strategies while fostering industrial-urban symbiosis (I-US) approaches among local and regional actors.

REHAP aims at revalorizing agricultural (wheat straw) and forestry (bark) waste through its recovery, and primary (sugars, lignin, tannins) and secondary (sugar acids, carboxylic acids, aromatics and resins) processing to turn them into novel materials, and considering Green Building as business case.

REMAGHIC is focused on contributing to Europe’s rare earth recovery and magnesium recycling technologies, improving the efficiencies of these processes and advancing the technology readiness levels for a new generation of industrial processes that will produce new low cost competitive alloys for a wide variety of sectors across Europe’s manufacturing value chain. The project motivation lies on the fact that magnesium alloys can offer a significant weight reduction when compared to aluminium alloys. weight reduction is a cross sectorial key design driver, if a superior energy absorption and vibratory behaviour is added, magnesium is promising candidate for future application if some of its drawbacks are overcome, such as its cost, manufacturability problems, corrosion and creep behaviour and low allowable service temperature. Addition of Rare Earth Elements (REE) improves the performance of Mg alloys significantly, though a price increase has to be taken into account. REMAGHIC believes that by investing in recovery and recycling technologies, a new alloying process can be developed to yield low cost Mg+REE alloys. In order to do this, REE that are usually stockpiled (Ce, La) in favour of the most demanded ones (Nd, Dy) will be considered as attractive candidates to lower the price. This list of REE will be completed by other promising candidates found in the literature (Y, Gd, Sm). The project will contribute to reducing the dependency of the supply of critical elements (REE and Mg) on sources exterior to the EU and to solving the REE Balance Problem.

The objective of RESYNTEX is to create a new circular economy concept for the textile and chemical industries. Through industrial symbiosis, it aims to produce secondary raw materials from textile waste.

The objective of the REVaMP project is to develop, adapt and apply novel retrofitting technologies to cope with the increasing variability of material and energy feedstocks and to ensure their efficient use. This will be demonstrated through a number of different use cases from electric and oxygen steelmaking, to aluminium refining and lead recycling. The performance and benefits of the technologies will be assessed and quantified.

The aim of REWAISE is to create a new “smart water ecosystem” that will result in a carbon free, sustainable hydrological cycle. In line with the concept of a resilient circular economy, REWAISE will recover energy, nutrients and materials from water in real operational environments, implementing technological innovations and new water governance methods with a network of nine living labs in five countries.

The SPIRE-SAIS project aims to enable and accelerate the uptake of Industrial Symbiosis and energy efficiency by developing a comprehensive cross-sectorial blueprint for skills. The SPIRE-SAIS alliance will address possible skills shortages in the Energy Intensive Industries while providing EU citizens with the necessary skill sets for future job profiles. The project will address updating of the curricula, qualifications, knowledge and skills that are required to support essential cross-sectoral collaboration and Industrial Symbiosis activities.

SCALER aims to increase the uptake of industrial symbiosis across Europe. Under the European Union’s Horizon2020 initiative, the project will develop a set of best practices, tools and guidelines, helping businesses and industrial sites work together to ensure sustainable resource use.

Sharebox will develop a secure platform for the flexible management of shared process resources that will provide plant operations and production managers with the robust and reliable information that they need in real-time in order to effectively and confidently share resources (plant, energy, water, residues, and recycled materials) with other companies in an optimum symbiotic eco-system.

SIMPLIFY aims at enabling the electrification of the chemical process industry – and in particular the specialty chemicals industries – by moving from batch to continuous production with flexibility being ensured by the application of alternative energy forms.

SO WHAT main objective is to develop and demonstrate an integrated software which will support industries and energy utilities in selecting, simulating and comparing alternative Waste Heat and Waste Cold exploitation technologies that could cost-effectively balance the local forecasted H&C demand also via renewable energy sources integration.

Project SPRING’s objective is to increase progression towards the SPIRE goals and enhance project return on investment by addressing the needs and barriers of those who make the decisions to adopt process innovations in industry.

Project STYLE ultimately seeks to identify and deliver a practical ‘toolkit’ that can be used by future EU projects and industry to assess the value (in sustainability terms) of new technologies and process modifications that seek to make resource and energy efficiency improvements.

SusPIRE project assimilates in its conception the sustainable energy use challenge described in the European SETPLAN and in SPIRE road map. It addresses its efforts to energy intensive industries and within this segment market to energy recovery from residual heat streams. To achieve this goal a two clearly differentiated working areas will be key aspects of this project. Technology area will include the development of materials and equipment. New Heat Transfer Fluids (HTF) and Phase Change Materials (PCM) will be the base for manufacture high efficiency heat exchangers in terms of energy capture and storage. Two Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTE) areas(low temperature range (30-50ºC) and medium (50-80ºC) will support a energy cascading concept where energy will be sequentially used and finally stored for further use or commercialized to third parties. The methodology aspects of this project want to establish a framework to foster the energy commercialization of surplus energy. Living areas, symbiosis with other companies in industrial parks, sports centers will beneficiate from cheaper energy, environmental impact reduction and social acceptance of energy intensive industrial activities. The coordination of the manufacturing and the energy recovery processes will be carried out by means of a smart methodology. A protocol definition software will deploy actions to create best practices in terms of process adjustment and operating instructions. Management concepts based on energy recovery rate as Key Process Indicator (KPI), will be integrated into the decision making mechanism of the company assuring permanent advances in this field of activity in forthcoming years.

SYMSITES aims at developing new technologies and solutions based on the Industrial and Urban symbiosis (I-US) concept, for local and regional collaborations among diverse actors (Citizens, Municipalities and Entreprises) and sectors improving the sustainability of the use of industrial and societal resources starting from wastewater and waste materials.

The main objective of the project is to develop solutions to recover the waste heat produced in energetic intensive processes of industrial sectors such as cement, glass, steelmaking and petrochemical and transform it into useful energy. These solutions will be designed after an evaluation of the energetic situation of these four industries and will deal with the development of Waste Heat Recovery Systems (WHRS) based on the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) technology. This technology is able to recover and transform the thermal energy of the flue gases of EII into electric power for internal or external use. Furthermore, a WHRS will be developed and tested to recover and transform the thermal energy of the flue gases of EII into mechanical energy for internal use (compressors).

The project tExtended aims to introduce an innovative approach to the recycling of textile waste with the development of a Blueprint, a knowledge-based masterplan for the optimized cycling of discarded textiles. The Blueprint will define the processes for the implementation of a circular textile ecosystem and enable the replication of the tExtended solutions in different areas, especially business opportunities emerging from circular systems and innovations that are environmentally and socially sustainable.  The development of the final Blueprint will include these steps:  

• The development of the Conceptual Framework, consisting of: textile waste classification based on identified material quality and properties, requirements of intended industrial end-use, economical aspects, environmental impacts of textile waste valorization and recycling processes; 
• The testing of the Framework within an Industrial-Urban symbiosis collaborative real scale demonstrator and the study of its replication potential in different regions.  

The aim of topAM is to develop novel oxide-particle-dispersoid strengthened (ODS) high-temperature alloys that are tailored for AM. The field of industrial application of such new materials are aggressive, high-temperature environments with challenging mechanical and corrosive operational demands. 

TRINEFLEX is an integrated energy intensive industries (EIIs) transformation toolkit following the `X as a service model´. For the end-users (EIIs), TRINEFLEX will function as an end-to-end service managing the plant?s digital lifecycle and the process of transition to flexible and sustainable operation. This process will be enabled by advanced and green data acquisition, Big Data Infrastructures, process analysis, model development and finally Digital Twins with integrated multi-agent decision support systems. 

VULKANO project aims to design, implement and validate an advanced retrofitting integrated solution to increase the energy and environmental efficiency in existing industrial furnaces fed with NG; through the combined implementation of new solutions based on high temperature phase change materials, new refractories, optimised co-firing of NG and syngas from biomass or process gas, an advanced monitoring and control system and an holistic in-house predictive tool.

he Water Mining project aims to provide for realworld implementations of the Water Framework Directive (and other water legislation), incorporating Circular Economy and EU Green Deal packages, by showcasing and validating innovative next generation water resource solutions at precommercial demonstration scale. The project will connect sectors, value chains and relevant stakeholders to achieve holistic innovations.

The aim of WIDER UPTAKE is to facilitate industrial symbiosis to increase resource efficiency, limit emissions and develop sustainable business based on water-smart solutions. The overall objective is to co-develop a roadmap for widespread implementation of water smart symbiotic solutions for wastewater reuse and resource recovery, based on the principles of the circular economy.