Intensified continuous processes are a key innovation of the last decade for the production of high quality, high value and customer-specific products at competitive prices in a sustainable fashion. To realize the potential of this technology, key steps must be made towards long-term stable, tightly controlled and fully automated production. The goal of the CONSENS project is to advance the continuous production of high-value products meeting high quality demands in flexible intensified continuous plants by introducing novel online sensing equipment and closed-loop control of the key product parameters. CONSENS will focus on flexible continuous plants but the results will be transferable also to large-scale continuous processes. The research and development is driven by industrial case studies from three different areas, spanning the complete value chain of chemical production: complex organic synthesis, speciality polymers, and formulation of complex liquids. Innovative PAT technology will be developed for online concentration measurements (mid-resolution process NMR), for the online non-invasive measurement of rheological properties of complex fluids, and for continuous measurements of fouling in tubular reactors. New model-based adaptive control schemes based on innovative PAT technology will be developed. The project results will be validated in industrial pilot plants for all three types of processes, including validation in production containers that have been developed in the F3 Factory project. Further, methods for sensor failure monitoring, control performance monitoring and engineering support for PAT-based solutions will be developed. The exploitation of the new technologies will be facilitated by a tool for technology evaluation and economic impact assessment. A Cross-sectorial Advisory Board supports the transfer of PAT technologies and adaptive control to neighboring sectors of the European processing industry.

Knowledge-based improvements of Li-ion battery cost, performance, recyclabiKnowledge-based improvements of Li-ion battery cost, performance, recyclability and safety are needed to enable electric vehicles to rapidly gain market share and reduce CO2 emissions. SPIDER’s advanced, low-cost (75 €/kWh by 2030) battery technology is predicted to bring energy density to ~ 450 Wh/kg by 2030 and power density to 800 W/kg. It operates at a lower, and thus safer, voltage, which enables the use of novel, highly conductive and intrinsically safe liquid electrolytes. Safety concerns will be further eliminated (or strongly reduced), as thermal energy dissipation will be reduced to 4 kW/kg, and thermal runaway temperature increased to over 200°C. Moreover, SPIDER overcomes one of the main Li-ion ageing mechanisms for silicon based anodes: notably, the loss of cyclable lithium, which should increase lifetime to 2000 cycles by 2022 for first life applications with further usefulness up to 5000 cycles in second life (stationary energy storage). In addition, SPIDER’s classic cell manufacturing process with liquid electrolyte will be readily transferable to industry, unlike solid electrolyte designs, which still require the development of complex manufacturing processes. Finally, SPIDER batteries will be designed to be 60% recyclable by weight, and a dedicated recycling process will be developed and evaluated during SPIDER. In addition, SPIDER materials significantly reduce the use of critical raw materials. Finally, four SPIDER partners are identified by the European Battery Alliance as central and strategic for the creation of the needed European battery value chain: SGL, NANO, VMI & SOLVAY. In conclusion, SPIDER proposes a real breakthrough in battery chemistry that can be readily adopted within a sustainable, circular economy by a competitive, European battery value chain to avoid foreign market dependence and to capture the emerging 250 billion € battery market in Europe.

The scope of the collaborative project is to develop a technical project management methodology to be able to speed up the decision through the process intensification. For the industrials, process intensification has to allow decreasing the time to market for a product by designing the most optimum process in term of energy consumption, safety, environment considerations, investment cost… The main objective of the project “PROCIP” is therefore the development of a general process intensification methodology which includes a software implementation as well as validation and support via efficient experimental techniques. To reach the objectives fixed by this project, multidisciplinary skills are necessary (skills in process, in modelling, in PI technologies, in project development, in industrial investment). So, we gathered these skills around the consortium: - Of industrials: BlueStar Silicones France and Rhodia; - Of SME: Processium, - And of complementary laboratories in Chemical engineering : Nancy-LRGP, Toulouse-LGC, Lyon-LGPC The association of the skills of these participants appeared as an evidence by their domains of research concerning the process intensification and their objectives to develop industrial demonstrations. The project is organized in 3 main technical parts: - Tools and methodologies to measure the basic data of the chemistry or process involved, - Characterization of equipments, in the field of process intensification : develop standardized methods to compare equipments performances as heat exchange capacity, mixing efficiency, mass transfer coefficient… - Software for Best Available Technology orientation The objective fits with the recommendations of the call as it will bring a methology to help the process engineer to think process innovation differently and to share the BAT sooner in the project development phase with the chemists. On an industrial plan, this work will permit to improve greatly the design of new processes thanks to a powerful software tool to look for the opportunity to implement intensified technologies. The survey of industrial cases will be done during the project in order to improve the relevance of the results. The industrial applicability will be therefore very fast. The large panel of studied technologies will facilitate portability on a large domain in chemical and pharmaceutical industries …. From the network of the partners and following meetings with Axelera Steering committee on “Factory of the Future”, others industrials are interested to test the software developed in the Procip Project. It is a part of the dissemination but the evaluations will be used to improve and tackle the pitfalls and weaknesses of the software. On a commercial plan, after the end of the project, Processium will continue the tool improvement in order to make a decision aiding tool usable for new reactive process developments and possibly to spread its application fields while integrating a systemic process vision (separation, environment, chemistry,…). This tool will accompany efforts already hired by Processium in separation process synthesis.