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.

The last half century has seen a tremendous advancement in adhesives technology and has led to widespread replacement of mechanical fasteners with adhesive bonds (e.g. aircraft, automobile, construction, etc.). Bonding to wet, rough and fouled surfaces, however, remains challenging and adhesive technology is rarely applied for bonding in wet conditions, such as in (orthopaedic) medicine. Therefore, a need exists to educate young researchers in this interdisciplinary research field of controlling adhesion under wet conditions and to bridge the gap between the fundamentals of underwater adhesives and their practice. BioSmartTrainee is set up to provide such training by a combination of three complementary scientific fields: polymer science, adhesion and (fluid)-biomechanics. We aim to (i) extract principles from biological systems and mimic them to design synthetic materials; to (ii) experimentally test their adhesion properties in wet conditions and to (iii) clarify the adhesion mechanisms based on natural examples and theoretical modelling. These innovative adhesives will be useful for reversible attachment to a variety of surfaces in wet environments and, therefore, be highly relevant for products from European industry such as technological adhesives, coatings, tissue adhesives, wound dressings or transdermal delivery devices. This carefully planned research and training program in a network of leading academic and industrial (BASF, AkzoNobel, UGRO) partners will ensure that young researchers are given an excellent training in a pioneering research domain of high scientific and technological relevance, where Europe can take a leading position.

Industrial Biotechnology is a Key Enabling Technology under Horizon 2020, expected to boost technological innovation and industrial leadership in the EU. It can improve chemical processes in compliance with the principles of Green Chemistry and effectively address social, environmental and economic needs. Assembling simple fragments to build larger, more complex products is an essential technology at the heart of industrial organic synthesis. With traditional chemical methods, C–C bond formation (“carboligation”) is difficult to control selectively, whereas enzymes can catalyze carboligation with excellent precision. Such addition reactions are ideally suited for industrial applications, being highly atom-efficient and producing no waste material. For unleashing the vast, hidden treasury of enzymatic carboligation, the CC-TOP consortium has identified and will address a number of critical needs, technology gaps, practical challenges and synthetic opportunities presenting a huge potential for innovation. The main goal of the CC-TOP ETN is to deliver tailored training and education to 15 top early-career researchers on cuttingedge carboligation enzyme technology and its translation into efficient Industrial Biotechnology applications, i.e. production of chiral fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The training will be implemented within an established network of worldleading European academic institutions and industrial partners, forming strong interdisciplinary relations through cosupervision and inter-sectoral secondments of the ESRs. The network´s aim for efficient translation of breakthrough technology into industrial applications is emphasized through the implementation of an industrial skills module involving all ESRs. CC-TOP combines leading-edge discovery technologies with state-of-the-art protein engineering and structural biology methods to specifically optimize process-validated carboligases for scalable applications in Industrial Biotechnology.