TriFluorium largely expands current circular economy capabilities for highly stable organofluoride waste (PFAS, including fluoropolymers) and provides safe, sustainable and efficient regeneration of fluorine into safe, stable inorganic fluorides as industrial resource, such as fluorspar. Fluoropolymers are indispensable for many critical (e.g., semiconductors) and green (e.g, hydrogen production, fuel cells, EVs) applications and their disposal options are very limited. Needed fluorspar resource is listed as EU’s critical raw material and is acquired outside of the EU with recycling rate at 1% due to the lack of proper technologies. TriFluorium wants to achieve proof of the tribolysis recycling principle for organofluorides (TRL 3) irrespective of particular chemical structure, molecular weight, or liquid/solid form under properly designed controllable tribocontact site, which promotes chemical reactions initiated by mechanical stimuli. Tribolysis shall within one processing step generate local dense-energy spots to initiate decomposition of very stable organofluorides, including the perfluorinated ones, and to activate safe reactants, such as alkaline earth metal (Group II) salts or oxides to efficiently convert organofluorides into safe, stable inorganic products (mineralization). TriFluorium will also develop a dedicated Tribo-Reactor for laboratory scale validation of tribolysis F-recycling (TRL 4) for process scaling and enhancement of tribolysis technology development towards industrial application. The locally initiated reactions with benign reactants have inherently safe operational and energy-efficiency features. Supporting toxicological and LCA assessments will be carried out to comprehensively evaluate tribolysis recycling process and Tribo-Reactor performance from all relevant perspectives. The foundation of tribolysis recycling for organofluorides answers urgent technological needs and contributes to current environmental, economic, and social goals.

BIOALL falls in the topics of fighting climate change, circular economy and clean energy through the development of efficient low-cost processes for the conversion of biomass and CO2 into high added-value chemicals and fuels. The scientific objectives of the projects aim at obtaining high added value chemicals from biomass. This will be done using a subproduct of biorefinery processes, formic acid, as hydrogen source to transform two key biomass derivative molecules, succinic acid and furfural into gamma-butyrolactone and furfuryl alcohol, that can be used as building block to produce chemicals for the pharmaceutical industry. By doing so, we avoid the use of hydrogen from fossil fuels. Since, formic acid decomposition results also in CO2. we also aim at obtaining cost-effective catalysts for the so-called automethanation, a reaction in which by adding oxygen the yield to methane is enhanced and that can be used in any process to convert CO2. The study of the reactions mechanisms will be also pursued to optimize the processes and expand the knowledge in this area to be useful for related transformations. To achieve these ambitious objectives, BIOALL is composed of a solid multidisciplinary (materials science, catalysis, engineering, economics, management, environmental, social and cost life cycle assessment) and international (Spain, Germany, France, The UK, Chile, Colombia and China) consortium that holds all the scientific, economical and human resources for the successful project development. The intersectoral partnerships with 3 relevant actors in the field, will be key in assessing the objectives. The project will bring together these complementary skills to develop synergies from which a significant added value is expected concerning the progress on the topic and to develop a fruitful long-term cooperation while training researchers and approaching research to the general public.

Hydrogen is expected to play a key role as an energy carrier in the path towards global sustainability. Nevertheless, right decisions are needed to make fuel cells and hydrogen (FCH) systems effective in this crusade. Besides technological advancements, methodological solutions that allow checking the suitability of FCH systems under sustainability aspects from a life-cycle perspective are needed to sensibly support decision-making. Such methodological contributions should rely on well-defined guidelines that allow a reliable assessment and benchmarking of FCH systems. In this sense, sound guidelines for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) of FCH systems are urgently needed. The goal of SH2E is to provide a harmonised (i.e., methodologically consistent) multi-dimensional framework for the LCSA and prospective benchmarking of FCH systems. To that end, SH2E will develop and demonstrate specific guidelines for the environmental (LCA), economic (LCC) and social (SLCA) life cycle assessment and benchmarking of FCH systems, while addressing their consistent integration into robust FCH-LCSA guidelines. These guidelines aim to be globally accepted as the reference document for LCSA of FCH systems and set the basis for future standardisation, going beyond the update of past initiatives such as the FC-HyGuide project and the IEA Hydrogen Task 36 through their reformulation to deal with underdeveloped topics such as material criticality and prospective assessment. For the sake of practicality and extended use of the guidelines, key SH2E outcomes also include user-friendly, open-access software tools with illustrative case studies, also being a source of publicly available data reviewed by a third party. Thus, the project is aligned with international initiatives towards global sustainability, including the Innovation Challenge on Renewable and Clean Hydrogen, by providing robust frameworks and tools that help decision-makers check the sustainability of FCH solutions.

SiToLub project aims to develop a digital tool/platform for the Safe and Sustainable by Design formulation of new lubricants. The tools developed will provide assessment of the safety (toxicity to humans, ecotoxicity to environment and workers risk) and, at the same time, sustainability guidance to design ecofluids (coolants, greases, oils) in a clear and holistic way regarding the foreseeable physico-chemical properties and tribological performance. The safety assessment will be realized by using molecular dynamic models developed by the partners. The tribological models will allow the prediction of the energy consumption during use by providing friction force values, and expected durability of the materials by using wear data about the materials in contact with different fluids. they will also provide information about tthe degradation of the fluids in use and the chemical reactions occurring. The models will be flexible enough to predict the behaviour of the materials for different working parameters applied for different applications (wind turbines, electric cars and waterborne) This ambitious and forward-thinking system will leverage on a series of tools, ranging from technical evaluation and prediction models (computational models supported by artificial intelligence), combined with established Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodologies to consider the environmental, social and economic impact. The project will move in close collaboration with already funded European projects as i-Tribomat (H2020 G.A. 814494) for the creation of a OiTB for tribological materials, OntoCommons (H2020 G.A. 958371) for the standardisation of data documentation across all domains related to materials and manufacturing and IRISS (HORIZON EUROPE G.A. 101058245), the international ecosystem for accelerating the transition to Safe-and-Sustainable-by-design materials, products and processes.

Polymers are one of the most used materials in different applications, especially in consumer goods like electronics, and the consumption is only expected to rise globally. In Europe, 25,8 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated annually and less than 30 % is collected for recycling and significant shares are exported from EU to be treated elsewhere. Landfilling (31 %) and incineration (39 %) of plastics is high (together 70 %), and by these treatment options the valuable materials are lost from circulation. It is estimated that 95 % of the value of plastic packaging material, between 70-105 billion EUR, is lost annually to the economy after a very short first-use cycle. The industry is lacking standards and main barriers for efficient uptake of recyclates are due to safety concerns, low quality, and recycling rates. PRIMUS activities will increase the resilience of EU's plastic value chains by securing supply of waste plastics as feedstock and increasing its availability through connecting value chain actors, developing methods to control quality, sampling, and analysis, and improving upgrading knowhow and characterize suitability towards added-value products. PRIMUS will prove legislative compliant, privacy-preserving, cost-efficient and feasible technological pathways for tapping into non-recycled or underutilized plastic waste streams. Validated business cases will lower the risks of future investments into European manufacturing capacity. PRIMUS will address one of the core challenges identified in the EU Circular Economy Action Plan, the presence of hazardous substances (brominated flame retardants) and how to effectively and safely debrominate the waste streams for new product use. PRIMUS will contribute to circulating underutilised or non-recycled streams and create further impact by supporting additional production of 0,2 Mtonnes of rHIPS, rPC/ABS, rEPDM and rTPE, which is approximately 6 % of the expected growth of European recyclate market 2018-2024.