The metal industry is generating every year millions of tons (Mt) of waste that in most of the cases is not re-used. Spent pot lining (SPL) is a waste material generated in the Al-smelting industry and has been classified as hazardous. For each ton of Al produced about 25 kg of SPL are generated and the Al- industry pays €520-1,560 million annually for recycling that waste with processes that do not bring much added-value. The ferrosilicon industry, whose annual production in 2013 was 8.1 million Mt is also generating an important amount of waste, mostly in the form of slag whose further treatment is both not optimized and expensive. On the other hand it appears the urgent need of minimizing the usage of cement as binding material (with the building industry as main consumer) due to the very severe environmental disadvantages: cement is the most produced and used raw material in the world with a global production in 2015 of 4.6 billion tonnes and it is responsible for 8% of the global CO2 emissions (3 billion tons of CO2 in 2015).Gerosion, an Icelandic SME founded in 2014, is finishing the development of Alsiment, an environmentally friendly cement-free binder able to bind SPL and other industrial waste, thus converting it into raw material valuable for energy-intensive industrial processes such as mineral wool production. With Alsiment Gerosion is supporting the metal industry to achieve their standards of sustainability by closing the material loop (re-use of all generated waste) while also enabling industries that currently rely on cementitious binders to reduce their use of cement.. Gerosion expects to obtain a cumulative revenue of €42 million in the period 2019-2021 achieving a 100% of the market share in Iceland and creating up to 11 new positions. This project is strategic for Gerosion as (i) it will position them at the centre of the Icelandic metal-waste recycling market, and (ii) it will boost their internationalization.

CIRCWIND will develop and validate innovative technologies for current and future wind turbines (WT), to enhance reliability and lifetime, performance, operability and maintainability, as well as to find cost-efficient pathways towards complete circularity in a context where a growing number of WT are reaching their EoL. CIRCWIND’s most relevant results are: - A prototype Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) material for blades with improved damage-tolerance and fatigue life, using a new multiscale modelling tool and simulation framework. - A circular low Carbon concrete material for offshore floating WT based on a new geopolymer binder and circular lightweight aggregates (CLWA). - New virtual replica-based constitutive models and simulation tools for the FRP material and geopolymer concrete, coupled with monitoring technologies allowing to simulate and predict failure and lifetime, and enabling future digital twinning for blade and substructure components. - Integrated sustainability analysis addressing social, economic and environmental aspects, as well as improved circularity. CIRCWIND will develop its technologies to TRL5, building prototypes and validating them in relevant environmental conditions. Representative components of TLP floater and blade have been chosen, made of geopolymer concrete and FRP materials respectively. These innovations will allow future WT to include circular and cost-efficient materials installed in critical WT components at operating windfarms, ensuring feasibility, sustainability, acceptability and high replicability. Besides, new simulation tools, virtual replicas, DT to improve O&M costs. CIRCWIND consortium has a good balance of academic and industrial partners, which allows the project’s developments to be well-oriented towards real market needs that in addition to the strong dissemination and exploitation plan proposed will maximise future impacts, clustering with relevant Offshore Wind stakeholders.

The MODERATOR project aims to improve the overall energy efficiency of data centres by developing an integrated system based on immersion cooling combined with novel and highly efficient long-term heat storage materials and systems. The main innovations of the project are related to the development and integration of individual components, which include (i) a novel designed immersion cooling system that enables heat recovery from data centres, (ii) a novel waste heat recovery (WHR) system using phase change materials (PCMs) for efficient low-temperature heat recovery, (iii) a highly efficient multilayer insulation system for thermal energy storage (TES) that uses recycled glass granules and microparticles to minimize heat losses and (iv) the integration of these components into an automated prototype for direct heat utilization and long-term storage. Furthermore, the project employs modeling and simulation activities, evaluation tools and dissemination methods to increase the exploitation potential of the developed technologies. The major outcome will be the operation and demonstration of a fully automated integrated prototype combining a 40 kW data centre immersion cooling system and a 500 kWh TES for WHR (TRL8). Potential utilization options of the stored thermal energy (i.e. space heating and electricity generation) will also be demonstrated within the project. The successful implementation of the MODERATOR project will have multiple impacts on different sectors. To accomplish all these results, the MODERATOR project will build upon the wide expertise of its 11 partners. In particular, the consortium consists of 3 research organizations and 8 SMEs with experience on various research and technological areas including materials science, systems design, process engineering, systems operation, modeling and simulation, technoeconomic, environmental and socioeconomic assessment, roadmap design, dissemination and communication, etc.

The Geo-coat project has been specified as necessary by our geothermal power and equipment manufacturing members, who, in order to reliably provide energy, need to improve plant capability to withstand corrosion, erosion and scaling from geofluids, to maintain the equipment up-time and generation efficiency. Additionally they need to be able to produce better geothermal power plant equipment protection design concepts through virtual prototyping to meet the increasing requirements for life cycle costs, environmental impacts and end-of-life considerations. Current materials, transferred from oil and gas applications to these exceptionally harsh environments, (and the corresponding design models) are not capable of performing, leading to constant need to inspect and repair damage. The Geo-coat project will develop new resistant materials in the form of high performance coatings of novel targeted "High Entropy Alloys" and Cermets, thermally applied to the key specified vulnerable process stages (components in turbines, valves, pumps, heat exchangers and pipe bends) in response to the specific corrosion and erosion forces we find at each point. We will also capture the underlying principles of the material resistance, to proactively design the equipment for performance while minimising overall capex costs from these expensive materials. The Geo-coat consortium has user members from geothermal plant operations and equipment manufacture to ensure the project's focus on real-world issues, coupled with world-leading experience in the development of materials, protective coatings and their application to harsh environments. In addition to developing the new coating materials and techniques, we also aim to transfer our experiences from the development of Flow Assurance schemes for Oil&Gas and Chemical industries to provide a new overarching set of design paradigms and generate an underpinning Knowledge Based System.

Geothermal is the most under-utilized of renewable sources due to high investment costs and long development cycle. A big part (53%) of the cost is in drilling and it is time-dependent. Geo-Drill aims to reduce drilling cost with increased ROP and reduced tripping with improved tools lives. Geo-Drill is proposing drilling technology incorporating bi-stable fluidic amplifier driven mud hammer, low cost 3D printed sensors & cables, drill monitoring system, Graphene based materials and coatings. Geo-Drill fluidic amplifier driven hammer is less sensitive to issues with mud and tolerances, less impact of erosion on hammer efficiency and it continues to operate with varying mud quality in efficient manner. It is also less affected by the environmental influences such as shocks, vibrations, accelerations, temperature and high pressures. Low cost and robust 3D-printed sensors & cables along the surface of the whole length of the drill string provides real-time high bandwidth data during drilling; e.g. estimation of rock formation hardness, mud flow speed, density, temp, etc. Flow assurance simulations combined with sensor readings and knowledge-based system will assist in optimizing drilling parameters and cuttings transport performance and safety conditions. Graphene's ability to tune the particular form lends itself uniquely as a component in a wide variety of matrices for coating developments with enhanced adhesion and dispersion properties and improved resistance to abrasion, erosion, corrosion and impact. Placing few mm hard-strength materials on drill bit, drill stabilizer through diffusion bonding improves their wear resistance and improve the lifetime. Geo-Drill's hammers improved efficiency and lifetime, drill parameter optimisation and CTP via sensors, reduced time in replacing tools with improved lifetime work together to improve ROP & lifetime resulting in reduced drilling time. Thereby, Geo-Drill will reduce drilling cost by 29-60%.