Precipitation-hardened nickel super alloy fasteners and bolts are crucial components in a wide range of areas that requires high strength in demanding and corrosive environments, for example aerospace, nuclear power stations, wind turbines, offshore oil & gas, and shipping. They are often exposed to hydrogen created by cathodic protection systems or by coupling to incompatible dissimilar alloys, which leads to hydrogen embrittlement (HE). The current state-of-the-art production is either forging or machining. With forged bolts, the forging process can drastically reduce the HE resistance, which has been the root cause for several recent unexpected costly and dangerous failures. While machined bolts can overcome this, they are often prohibitively expensive and also inefficient (material usage, energy). In this project we will use Linear Friction Welding (LFW) combined with advanced computational simulations & optimizations as well as experiments & data analysis to develop an innovative and much more efficient manufacturing method. Compared to machined fasteners and bolts, we expect significant materials savings, increased productivity, and significantly reduced energy consumption, which together will lead to much lower total costs. In this project, we will gain crucial insights on a new efficient manufacturing method, its tooling, and advanced simulation & optimization, which will lead to a step change in competitiveness for the partners.
The healthcare sector is hindered by several barriers that hamper the application of circular economy principles (e.g. the safety restrictions of the domain limit the use of recycled materials due to the need of materials biocompatibility, and safety in products to be used in the human body). Led by a multidisciplinary consortium of 39 partners (plus 13 industry affiliates) from 15 EU countries plus UK and USA, ENKORE aim to tackle challenges and develop an ecoDesign framework that supports the development of safe and environmental compliant devices eco-responsible packaging, which minimize the environmental impact, reduce the carbon footprint, and maximize the use and preservation of resources. The main goal is to connect the design of the medical devices packages with the end-of-life stage, thus the technologies that support circularity are taken into account at the medical device conception stage. ENKORE framework will be validated in 5 Reference Use Cases (RUCs), led by 5 different health regions that bring HPCs and policy maker, 3 large EU hospitals and the reference network for European Regional and Local Health Authorities (EUREGHA). The project developments and RUCs are supported by several associations and NGOs, a packaging manufacturer and a group of SMEs and researchers, specialists in circularity, LCA, social sciences, environment, circularity, and materials. The validation of the framework shall provide evidence to work with policymakers, creating new or revised standards and create tangible/quantitative evidence. Policy making and regulatory engagement will be strongly performed. The methods and tools comprise Environmental and Social Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA/SLCA), Circularity Calculator (CC) and Digital Product Passport (DPP) approaches, which could be adapted during the second stage of the proposal.
Nanoé is a French-Malagasy social business moved by the ambition to amplify energy access and employment creation in rural Africa through the implementation of a new electrification model based on renewable energies, digital technologies and local entrepreneurship, named Lateral Electrification.
In the PowerPath project Nanoé collaborates with Technovative Solutions Limited, the University of Lancaster, TWI Limited and The Power Hub Limited and seek funding to develop a first of a kind progressive technological concept that clusters smaller power infrastructures (from solar nanogrid, to DC microgrid, to DC/AC minigrid) to deliver more intense energy services (like motor or thermal uses) in a way that ensures stable, abundant energy access through solar.
Further to technological development, the business model of PowerPath addresses a plurality of challenges related to the deployment and maintenance of the technologies related to the nanogrids/microgrids as they focus to the training and strong participation of not-skilled community members without gender discrimination to become technically skilled agents of the energy expansion.
In this context the project addresses sustainable development goals: SDG-7 (access to energy), SDG-8 (access to employment) and SDG-13 (development of sustainable energy practices).
The role of power, heating and cooling is critical to achieve the EU objective of climate neutrality by 2050. Heating and cooling represent today 46% of EU energy system, that is, more than 5700 TWh, out of which, only 18% are produced with renewable sources of heating. To exploit the geothermal for energy balancing at scale, it is essential to focus on the best use of low to medium temperature resources because Europe possesses mostly low-enthalpy resources at temperature ranging from 110oC to 170oC and they are predominantly found in sedimentary formations such as the Pannonian Basin or the Upper Rhein Graben. EGS based geothermal can be developed anywhere across the EU. Low to medium temperature geothermal field developed based on either hydrothermal resources or EGS can be technically exploited by binary or ORC plant for power generation. Flexible ORC operation to produce load following power is economically challenging. nGEL is aiming to transform a geothermal ORC plant to a flexible tri-generation plant capable of both efficiently as well as cost effectively responding to the dynamic demand of power, heating, and cooling, attributing geothermal energy as a dispatchable source to balance the power and thermal grid against the progressive integration of intermittent RES (i.e., solar, wind). This will be achieved through the integration of absorption chiller, thermal energy storage, cold thermal energy storage, heat exchangers,smart control and energy management system (EMS) with AI functionalities. EMS will schedule the production and distribution of power, heat and cooling by interacting day-ahead market, grid operator, and analysing predicted energy demand and prices. If the nGEL technology can be implemented in all of the existing ORC plants in the EU, around 215 TWht heat can be delivered to the thermal grid, which is approximately 4% of the EU current annual heat demand, which corresponds to annual economic saving (on NG import) of € 9.6 billion/year.
The battery, although central to the green transition of road transport, currently suffers from a supply chain that lacks traceability, sustainability, resiliency, and circularity. Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) are essential for battery manufacturing. The explosive growth of electric vehicles, driven by climate neutrality policy objectives, will pressure the CRM supply chain and increase EU dependency on third countries, resulting in decreased competitiveness for EU automotive and battery manufacturers. Implementing the digital battery passport (DBP) concept in the battery value chain could resolve these issues. The main goal of the BASE project is to develop, validate, and implement a working DBP service, as mandated by the “Regulation.” This will be achieved by exploiting data collected through a number of constantly evolving tools and methods, ensuring a transparent, secure, and cost-efficient platform operation, while also catalyzing the growth of circular businesses. BASE will develop transparent methodologies to calculate battery performance and ESGE indicators, ensuring traceability down to the CRM level throughout the entire battery value chain. In the physical domain, this will be achieved through the mass balancing approach. On the data management side, by exploiting distributed ledger technology, BASE will ensure built-in data authenticity verification along the value chain, with no data duplication, avoiding data manipulation, assuring privacy by design, and promoting data interoperability. The DBP will provide up-to-date and accurate data on battery performance indicators, remaining useful life, dismantling, material composition, and safety. This will allow for an increase in the useful service life of batteries and more efficient recycling, which will enhance resource efficiency, reduce waste, and decrease EU dependency on CRMs from third countries. The applicability of the DBP will be demonstrated through four pilot use cases.
Remanufacturing is critical for Circular Economies, extending product life, creating jobs and revenue streams, and reducing waste, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. The main challenges that need to be addressed for successful remanufacturing in an industrial value chain or, more appropriately, value cycle are related to process, design, and business models. To meet these challenges, RESTORE will offer sustainable by design remanufacturing process and materials along with supporting tools for digitalization of remanufacturing ecosystem or value chain. RESTORE is aiming to advance potential SoA cladding technologies including laser direct energy deposition, plasma transfer arc process for sustainable remanufacturing application. To increase the deposition rate for large scale applications, we are aiming to develop a novel hybrid process combining laser and PTA process. We are aiming to manufacture wire feedstock with recycled content and develop a wire feeding system coupled with auxiliary feeding system to transfer machining swarf/unused powder directly into the melt pool, this will pave the way to zero waste and low-cost remanufacturing technology. For digitalization, we are also aiming to develop RESTORE platform, which will offer digital technologies and tools, which are digital technologies to increase process automation, recipe book and simulation tools for product and process optimisation, decision support framework, ecoDESIGN framework, blockchain enabled digital product passport, digital marketplace, business model templates, and collaborative spaces that can help to facilitate and streamline the remanufacturing process, providing greater traceability, transparency, and efficiency. The digital collaborative space will bring all relevant actors of the remanufacturing domain under one umbrella to share data and leverage a decision support framework and supporting tool, guiding the optimal remanufacturing of industrial products and components.
SEHRENE’s new electrothermal energy storage (ETES) concept is designed to store renewable electricity (RE) and heat and to restitute it as needed. It is very energy-efficient (80-85%), is geographically independant and uses no critical raw materials. It enables 8-12 times longer storage duration than Li-ion, with LCOS of 80 – 137 €/MWh, depending on the use-case. This is lower than pumped hydro, the lowest-cost commercial electricity storage. Its lifetime of 20-30 years is 2 – 3x longer than Li-ion. A TRL4 prototype and the digital twins of 3 full use-cases will be delivered: (i) ceramics plant storing excess, on-site PV power in a micro-grid and industrial waste-heat for continuous green H2 production and self-consumption, (ii) a smart-grid, and (iii) a geothermal power plant. The ETES integrates: (i) a novel heat-pump design with a coefficient of performance of 50% the theoretical maximum, (ii) a novel thermal energy storage system with energy density of 90 kWh/m3 (+30%), containing phase-change material in a novel metallic Kelvin cells-like foam and (iii) ORC with novel operating parameters. New digital tools will optimise the energy management of the storage and facilitate investment decisions by potential end-users taking LCA and technico-economic factors into account. SEHRENE unites 5 R&D teams with top level expertise in prototyping, physics-based modelling, characterisation and digital twins of thermo-electric systems, thermal storage and AI-based energy-management; 1 RE producer, 1 DSO, 1 ceramics company, 1 SME developing decision-support tools, and 1 SME for dissemination and communication. The exploitation plan aims to implement the solution in the first factory in 2029. SEHRENE’s market penetration will enable to capture 1% of the market by 2040 avoiding 90Mm3 of NG and 15Mt CO2/year. R&D and industrial partners project to generate 5.8M€ in revenues by 2035 from sales of heat pumps, thermal storage, ORC, licenses to R&D results and consulting services
The FLUTE project will advance and scale up data-driven healthcare by developing novel methods for privacy-preserving cross-border utilization of data hubs. Advanced research will be performed to push the performance envelope of secure multi-party computation in Federated Learning, including the associated AI models and secure execution environments. The technical innovations will be integrated in a privacy-enforcing platform that will provide innovators with a provenly secure environment for federated healthcare AI solution development, testing and deployment, including the integration of real world health data from the data hubs and the generation and utilization of synthetic data. To maximize the impact, adoption and replicability of the results, the project will contribute to the global HL7 FHIR standard development, and create novel guidelines for GDPR-compliant cross-border Federated Learning in healthcare. To demonstrate the practical use and impact of the results, the project will integrate the FLUTE platform with health data hubs located in three different countries, use their data to develop a novel federated AI toolset for diagnosis of clinically significant prostate cancer and perform a multi-national clinical validation of its efficacy, which will help to improve predictions of aggressive prostate cancer while avoiding unnecessary biopsies, thus improving the welfare of patients and significantly reducing the associated costs. Team. The 11- strong consortium will include three clinical / data partners from three different countries, three technology SMEs, three technology research partners, a legal/ethics partner and a standards organization. Collaboration. In accordance with the priorities set by the European Commission, the project will target collaboration, cross-fertilization and synergies with related national and international European projects.