The EU generates 12.6 million tonnes of textile waste per year, with only 22% currently collected for reuse or recycling—the rest often incinerated or landfilled. With mandating separate textile collection across the EU by 2025, the collected amount is expected to increase and we must upscale sorting and recycling capacity and efficiency to ensure sustainable recovery of the material. SORT4CIRC’s overall ambition is to improve value creation and cost efficiency through automated sorting and innovative recycling. This will generate new revenue streams for sorters and recyclers by turning non-re-wearable textiles into valuable feedstock for high-value recycling. The project will strive to unlock the current technological gaps for textile identification and value-chain traceability, while providing an overall sound business case driving circularity within the textile value chain (TVC). The use of modern digital technology in the sorting process will make it easier to achieve comprehensive information of the materials and fabrication process steps and integrate it to automated presorting and sorting for recycling processes. The different & complementary techonolgies are interlinked with each other with interoperable architecture to achieve complete traceability. Results generated are cross-checked to ensure reliability and consistency, to make decision over its optimal channel for reuse or recycling. SORT4CIRC gathers all relevant expertise to develop a systemic transformative solution enabling a traceable, circular textile industry: industrial collector and sorter, design for recycling by allowing disassembly, technology developers (machine learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), imaging, hyperspectral, NIR, multisensors), recyclers (chemical, thermo-mechanical and mechanical), along with specialists in supply chain traking and tracing, digital passports, blockchain technology and IoT, textile business models, trade and LCC/LCA.

The overall objective of the IT2 project is to explore, develop and demonstrate technology options that are needed to realize 2nm CMOS logic technology extending the scaled Semiconductor technology roadmap to the next node in accordance to Moore’s law. These activities cover creation of Lithography equipment, new Processes & Modules and Metrology tools capable to create and deal with new 2nm node 3D structures, defect analysis, overlay and features. The topics addressed by the program relate to the ECSEL MASP 2019 Chapter 10; “Process Technology, Equipment, Materials and Manufacturing for electronic components and systems”, with emphasis on the following major challenge “the Extension of world leadership in Semiconductor Equipment, Materials and Manufacturing solutions” and “Developing Technology for heterogeneous System-on-Chip (SoC) Integration” of the ECSEL JU Annual Work Plan 2019. The relation of the IT2 project to world leadership regards the extension of the scaled semiconductor technology roadmaps and thereby maintain competence in advanced More Moore technology in Europe to support leading edge manufacturing. The relation of the IT2 project to the Developing Technology for heterogeneous System-on-chip Integration comes from activities regarding “System Scaling” in which technology is developed that enables wafer-to-wafer bonding creating 3D heterogeneous solutions with the aim to resolve performance limitations in power and data congestion. In regard to the annual work plan 2019, the IT2 project support the ECSEL JU objectives by contribution to the development of a strong and competitive Electronic Components and Systems (ECS) by involving many of the equipment and tool developers like; ASML, Zeiss, Thermo Fisher, Applied Materials, Nova, KLA along the value chain and knowledge institutes such as ARCNL, imec, PTB, TNO and TU/e. And by stimulating a dynamic ecosystem through through the involvement of SMEs like IBS, Recif, Reden and Unity.

For the future of space exploration and space logistics, and to reduce costs for orbit transportation of future payloads, very high-power Hall Effect thrusters of 20 kW or above are at the forefront of several initiatives today. Be it as single or clustered units, the combined thrust of these electric propulsion systems (EPS) paves the way to allowing larger spacecraft and more ambitious missions to be envisaged. However, given that these missions would require significant burn time of the EPS, several important issues must be addressed that go beyond the simple ability of manufacturing larger EPS components. Specifically, qualifying such electric thrusters for lifetime is currently a showstopper. In the race to the Moon and Mars, as well as other lucrative commercial missions within earth’s orbit beyond 2030, the European Space industry must catch up with the US. Studies within Europe have already been initiated for the incremental development of 20-kW class Hall thrusters such as the FP7 HiPER project which produced the PPS®20k ML thruster up to TRL4, FP7 CHEOPS project which permitted SITAEL to develop their 20kW HET, ESA projects allowing UNIPI to develop their nested multi-channel TANDEM thruster or the ongoing H2020 ASPIRE project led by SITAEL. Nevertheless, given the challenges and the opportunities that VHP present, research such as proposed in CHEOPS-VHP-BB must be anticipated now ahead of its effective deployment in 2030-40. Project activities will complement ongoing thruster-focused development activities with research and development on key building blocks essential for the future use of VHP Hall thruster systems: overall system architecture against various mission use cases, robust and cost-effective approach to qualification using Probabilistic Failure Analysis, manufacturability of key components subject to wear, notably the discharge chamber and cathode and the ability to envisage alternative propellants and power sources for future missions.