The answer to the current Raw Material supply challenge faced today in Europe, lies in technological innovations that increase the efficiency of resource utilization and allow the exploitation of yet untapped resources such as industrial waste streams and metallurgical by-products. One of the key industrial residues which is currently not or poorly valorised is Bauxite Residue (BR, more commonly known as “red mud”) from alumina refineries. Bauxite residue reuse solutions do exist as stand-alone but pooling them together in an integrated manner is the only way to render bauxite residue reuse viable from an economical point of view and acceptable for the industry The RemovAl project will combine, optimize and scale-up developed processing technologies for extracting base and critical metals from such industrial residues and valorising the remaining processing residues in the construction sector. In term of technological aspects, RemovAl will process several by-products from the aluminium sector and from other metallurgical sectors in Europe (SiO2 by-products, SPL, fly ash,and others). The different waste streams will be combined to allow for optimal and viable processing in different technological pilot nodes. The technologies and pilots in most cases have already been developed in previous or ongoing projects and through RemovAl they will be pooled together and utilized in a European industrial symbiosis network. In term of societal or non-technological aspects, RemovAl will gather key sectors like the non-ferrous metal and cement sectors in order to secure a true industrial symbiosis through a top-down approach considering also legislation and standardisation at European level in order to facilitate the implementation of the most promising technical solutions.

COGNIPLANT project will develop and demonstrate an innovative approach for the advanced digitization and intelligent management of the process industries. This approach will be based on a novel vision to data monitoring and analysis, that will 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 by up to 68% in real time control of the productive environment, 65% in quality control of the final products and 70 % in response time to uncontrolled incidents. The concept will be implemented by four end-users from four different SPIRE industries, one chemical industry in Austria, one aluminum refinery in Ireland, one concrete manufacturing industry in Italy and one metal industry in Spain. The COGNIPLANT solution will provide a hierarchical monitoring and supervisory control that will give a comprehensive vision of the plants’ production performance as well as the energy and resource consumption. Advanced data analytics will be applied to extract valuable information from the data collected about the processes and their effect on the production plant’s overall performance enabling to design and simulate operation plans in digital twin models based on the conclusions. As a result, optimal operation plans will be obtained that will improve the performance of those cognitive production plants. In addition, the project will demonstrate the positive impact derived from the implementation of COGNIPLANT solution that will allow industries reducing their CO2 emissions up to 20%. A training strategy will be designed to provide a comprehensive framework for the dissemination of the project outcomes and a clear understanding of the new solution for the employees of the SPIRE sectors.

The ReActiv project will create a novel sustainable symbiotic value chain, linking the by-product of the alumina production industry and the cement production industy. Bauxite residue (BR) is the main by-product of the alumina sector produced at rates of 7 million tons per year in EU, while recycling rates are less than 100 thousdand tons per year respectively. In ReActiv modification will be made to both the alumina production and the cement production side of the chain, in order to link them through the new ReActiv technologies. The latter will modify the properties of the industrial residue , transforming into an active material (with pozzolanicor hydraulic activity) suitable for new, low CO2 footprint, cement products. In this manner ReActiv proposes a win-win scenario for both industrial sectors (reducing wastes and CO2 emissions respectively). To achieve its objectives the ReActiv project brings together the global leader in cement production with the bigest alumina producers along with top research and technology centers with significant expertise in the field. Furthermore the European alumina association and the international aluminium institute are participating in the project to safeguard the industrial dissemination and deployement of project results. The methodology developed under ReActiv can be replicated in by-products of other industrial sectors as well. To this end the project will seek to include in modelling and/or labscale enviroment other by-products in the developed flowsheets.