The PHOTOSINT project presents solutions to the challenges chemical industries are facing in integrating renewable energy sources into their processes. The project will deliver sustainable processes to produce hydrogen and methanol as energy vectors using only sunlight as an energy source and wastewater and CO2 as feedstocks, making the industries more auto-sufficient. The pathway is based on solar-driven artificial photosynthesis, and aims to develop new catalytic earth-abundant materials and modifications of existing ones to improve catalytic processes. Design parameters of the PEC cell will be tuned to maximize solar to fuel (STF) efficiency. Moreover to improve the conversion for industrial implementation, PHOTOSINT will develop a novel way to concentrate and illuminate the semiconductor surface to maximize overall energy efficiency. Perovskite solar PV cells will be integrated to harvest the light to supply the external electrical voltage. PHOTOSINT is an ambitious project due to precedents in research conducted to date and the low production rate of the desired products. For integrating sunlight energy into the industry, the catalyst will be studied, and then the best one/s will be implemented in prototypes. The obtained results will be used for making scale-up in pilots with tandem PEC cells. These steps are necessary to assess the industrial scale-up feasibility, promoting the increased competitiveness of renewable process energy technologies and energy independence. MeOH and H2 will be tested in engines. Also, an HTPEM fuel cell will be used for electricity generation, and hydrogen will be tested as an alternative fuel for energy generation instead natural gas in melting furnaces avoiding CO2 emissions.

The project main goal is to develop new generation batteries for battery storage with a modular technology, suitable for different applications and fulfilling the increasing need of decentralised energy production and supply for private households and industrial robotised devices.. New materials and components will be developed and optimised to achieve longer lifetime (up to 10,000 cycles depending on the material selected), lower costs (down to 0.03 €/kWh/cycle), improved safety and more efficient recycling (>50%). The expected results will strengthen EU competitiveness in advanced materials and nanotechnologies and the related battery storage value chain, preparing European industry to be competitive in these new markets. This will be achieved by using high capacity anodes coupled with cobalt free cathode and with a very safe gel polymer electrolyte separator, leveraging partners’ knowledge in advanced materials. This new technology will be developed up to a TRL 6 (large prismatic cell ESP-Cell 30Ah) at the end of the project, producing these novel high voltage high capacity batteries close to practical applications. Further, the proposed solution will allow Europe to become more independent from raw material and the feasibility of a metal recovery process will be deeply investigated and recommendations for future application will be made. To achieve the ambitious targets, the CoFBAT project covers the entire value chain, bringing together industrial experts in material development and battery science together with engineering companies and institutes and battery producers and integrators.

The negative environmental impacts results from the linear ‘take, make, dispose’ and dominant economic models of our time, traditionally adopted by decision-making of main stakeholders around mobility are changing thank to EV's irruption, but Lithium-Ion Batteries (LIBs) are not yet green enough to reduce mobility footprint to lowest levels. Thus, recycling has to be developed to achieve higher efficiencies and recovery rates to reintroduce Critical Raw Materials from End-of-Life (EOL) LIBs. Recycling technology is still at the lab-scale due to the complex structure of EOL LIBs. Currently, pyro-metallurgy is the most applied method in the industry. Although this process does not need pre-treatment, its energy-wasting, the equipment investment is large and it will cause serious pollution. In response to these problems, many companies have developed hydrometallurgical processes, that can recover Li and Al with low energy consumption. However, it requires pre-treatment, leaching, purification and other steps, and it could be a long way. FREE4LIB aims to develop at TRL 5-6 technologies to achieve 6 new sustainable and efficient processes to recycle EOL LIBs (dismantling, pre-treatment and 4 materials recovery processes) delivering innovative recycling solutions to reach highly efficient materials recovery (metal oxides, metals and polymers) improving the supply of secondary resources at EU level. FREE4LIB also will deliver 3 processes aiming at metals and polymers re-using and electrode synthesis for re-manufacturing new LIBs, and it will study options to harness non-reusable elements. It will also deliver a Battery Passport (BP) methodology to improve processes traceability. Besides, 2 Open Platforms will be deployed: BP and Data-driven models for the process’s optimisation. At end, to validate and spread FREE4LIB: new LIBs will be assembled on battery packs and engagement activities with citizens, policymakers and battery stakeholder will be carried out, respectively.

European process industries face significant challenges in a changing geopolitical landscape, under the threat of climate change and against fierce international competition. In this context, boosting the resilience and competitiveness of process industries, while taking surefooted steps towards climate neutrality is of existential importance. StreamSTEP is the vision of 31 organisations across EU, Switzerland, Norway and UK, aspiring to trigger significant improvements of how heating energy is managed within industrial processes. The project will address processes that generate waste heat across all temperature grades, from 135oC to over 1400oC, deploying five innovative heat exchanger prototypes for challenging applications and achieving flexible operation across multiple heat sinks. Heat upgrade will be managed through high temperature heat pumps, achieving outlet temperatures at 150oC and at 215oC, with improved performance through ejector technology and the capacity to operate dynamically across a range of required temperatures. Enablers of these innovations are advanced manufacturing techniques, achieving superior material performance through novel material alloys. The system will be demonstrated across five sectors: non-ferrous metals, ceramics, minerals, plastics and refining. The demonstrators will be supported by impact boosting resources, de-risking the investment and accelerating commercialisation. A holistic process digital twinning pipeline will be integral to these advancements, as it will provide the infrastructure to deploy powerful optimisation agents, addressing energy balance, intermediary storage, GHG avoidance and data-driven LCA. The effects of the StreamSTEP project will be significant, as the recovery and efficient reutilisation of the majority of waste heat (50%-over 90%) will be achieved, with systems boasting a payback below 3 years, with the added effects of increasing productivity in selected processes, as well as energy flexibility.

SEHRENE’s new electrothermal energy storage (ETES) concept is designed to store renewable electricity (RE) and heat and to restitute it as needed. It is very energy-efficient (80-85%), is geographically independant and uses no critical raw materials. It enables 8-12 times longer storage duration than Li-ion, with LCOS of 80 – 137 €/MWh, depending on the use-case. This is lower than pumped hydro, the lowest-cost commercial electricity storage. Its lifetime of 20-30 years is 2 – 3x longer than Li-ion. A TRL4 prototype and the digital twins of 3 full use-cases will be delivered: (i) ceramics plant storing excess, on-site PV power in a micro-grid and industrial waste-heat for continuous green H2 production and self-consumption, (ii) a smart-grid, and (iii) a geothermal power plant. The ETES integrates: (i) a novel heat-pump design with a coefficient of performance of 50% the theoretical maximum, (ii) a novel thermal energy storage system with energy density of 90 kWh/m3 (+30%), containing phase-change material in a novel metallic Kelvin cells-like foam and (iii) ORC with novel operating parameters. New digital tools will optimise the energy management of the storage and facilitate investment decisions by potential end-users taking LCA and technico-economic factors into account. SEHRENE unites 5 R&D teams with top-level expertise in prototyping, physics-based modelling, characterisation and digital twins of thermo-electric systems, thermal storage and AI-based energy-management; 1 RE producer, 1 DSO, 1 ceramics company, 1 SME developing decision-support tools, and 1 SME for dissemination and communication. The exploitation plan aims to implement the solution in the first factory in 2029. SEHRENE’s market penetration will enable to capture 1% of the market by 2040 avoiding 90Mm3 of NG and 15Mt CO2/year. R&D and industrial partners project to generate 5.8M€ in revenues by 2035 from sales of heat pumps, thermal storage, ORC, licenses to R&D results and consulting services.