The proposed project is to develop and maintain long term collaborations between Europe and China towards CO2 neutral Olefin production. We will realize this objective by carrying out joint research in big data and artificial intelligence (AI) for ethylene plants integrated with carbon capture and CO2 utilisation. Specifically this requires a universal set of skills such as pilot scale experimental study, process modelling and analysis, optimisation, catalysis and reaction kinetics that will be strengthened by the individual mobility of researchers between Europe and China. There are 12 partners involved in OPTIMAL with 3 industrial partners. These partners are world leading in their respective research areas. OPTIMAL is planned to start from Aug. 2021 and will continue for 65 months. There will be 28 experienced and 35 early stage researchers participating in OPTIMAL with exchange visits of 262 person months. The funding of €772,800 will be requested from European Commission to support these planned secondments. The European beneficiaries are experts at catalysis, CO2 utilisation, intensified carbon capture, reaction mechanism and kinetics & CFD studies, hybrid modelling, molecular simulation and dynamic optimisation, whilst the Chinese partners are experts at exergy analysis, process control and optimisation, solvent-based carbon capture & data-driven model development, deep reinforced learning based model free control, intelligent predictive control, physics-based reduced order model development, soft exergy sensor development and optimisation under uncertainty. Transfer of knowledge will take place through these exchange visits. We will generate at least 25 Journal publications and 25 Conference papers. 2 Special Issues will be established in leading journals such as Applied Energy. 2 Workshops and 2 Special Sessions in major international conferences will also be organised to disseminate project results.

The objective of the project IMPROOF is to drastically improve the energy efficiency of steam cracking furnaces by at least 20%, in a cost effective way, while simultaneously reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses and NOx per ton ethylene produced by at least 25%. One important way to reduce the energy input in steam cracking furnaces is to reduce coke formation on the reactor wall. The use of either advanced coil materials, combined with 3D reactor designs, improved process control, and more uniform heat transfer will increase run lengths, reducing simultaneously CO2 emissions and the lifetime of the furnaces. Biogas and bio-oil will be used as alternative fuels because they are considered renewable, and hence, decrease net CO2 production. Application of high emissivity coatings on the external surface of the radiant coils will further substantially improve the energy consumption. Less firing is required to reach the same process temperatures in the radiant coils. This will reduce fuel gas consumption and CO2 emissions by 10 to 15%. IMPROOF will demonstrate the advantage of combining all these technological innovations with an anticipated increase of the time on stream with a factor 3. To select the correct technologies for sustainable implementation in complex plant-wide and industrial data-intensive process systems, all the technology will be implanted in real-plant conditions at TRL6 in DOW. The strongly industrial oriented consortium is composed of 7 industrial partners, including 2 SME completed by 2 RTO and 2 university. This partnership shows a clear and strong path to the industrial and economical world with the involvement of all actors of the furnaces business. The financial resources mobilized by the partners represent a total grant of 6 878 401,25 € with a global effort of 538 person.month.

The overall objective of ELECTRO is to demonstrate a revolutionary technology concept that links the waste and petrochemical industry and provides them with a sustainable, low GHG footprint and scalable circular solution for olefin and polyolefin production. The priority for ELECTRO is the plastic waste streams that are currently not recycled but rather either incinerated or dumped to landfill: examples are multilayer plastics, mixed PE/PP/PS, and waste PS. An innovative modular extruder for optimal pre-treatment of plastic waste will be combined with an electrically heated reactor for the catalytic pyrolysis of plastic waste at TRL 7. The main product, plastic waste pyrolysis oil, will be used as a feed for steam crackers. Steam cracking will be electrified in the roto-dynamic reactor (RDR), a second novel reactor technology to be demonstrated at TRL 7 in ELECTRO. In the RDR heat transfer is accelerated by an order of magnitude compared to heat transfer rates achieved in the fired heaters used in conventional crackers. And so the RDR has a substantially higher selectivity towards light olefins and improved process efficiency. The light olefins will be further processed into PE and PP, demonstrating the technical feasibility of chemical recycling and the use of plastic waste as a circular carbon feed. This scalable concept will enable strong industrial symbiosis, with the initial LCA showing an 90% GHG reduction compared to today's best available technology (BAT). Given the amount of plastic waste that can be converted, and the market demand for the compounds produced, the impact of ELECTRO will be profound. To further extend the impact of ELECTRO, the global replicability and economic viability of the proposed concept will be demonstrated using waste streams from the Republic of Korea and Indonesia, and a thorough programme will be implemented to train the next generation of waste management engineers and workers.