NdFeB magnets drive low-carbon futures. Their unique high performance properties outclass alternatives, including SmCo magnets. Securing sustainable rare earth (RE) sources for NdFeB magnets is vital to meet global sustainability and climate goals. However, global RE value chains are associated with poor environment, social and governance (ESG) performance. This increases risks and undermines sustainability aims, whilst adversely impacting new generations of RE mines and refineries being created by UK companies such as Pensana. This project supports innovative business model creation, incorporating low-carbon, environmentally sustainable and socially just approaches to ensure a resilient and sustainable supply chain for NdFeB magnets. Limitations in data cause RE lifecycle assessments (LCA) to run only as mine-to-magnet, ignoring the impacts of the use, end of life and circular economy phases. Moreover, gross estimations are forced, to fill data gaps, creating impact assessment difficulties and challenges for improving ESG performance, whilst undermining supply chain resilience. This project has two aspects. 1.A novel and unique assessment of environmental and social impacts across the entire NdFeB value chain, surpassing traditional LCA analysis by identifying individual impact measures, and considering both positive and negative impacts and how they interface with each other. 2.Combining industrial and academic expertise to identify potential material interventions, thereby maximising environmental sustainability and adding social value across the entire value chain. The project uses Route2's innovative V2S platform to assess impacts across six major capital categories in sustainable global value chains; from Pensana's mine in Angola to the global centre for RE processing in Hull, to Polestar's downstream use and end-of-life phases. Route2's model uses an integrated reporting focus, allowing for both positive and negative impact assessment. The unique partnership delivering this project brings an innovative skill set and approach to this project. Pensana, already a leader in the RE ESG space, provide up-stream and mid-stream expertise, Polestar, through their innovative Polestar0 carbon-neutral car design and Route2 with their in depth Value2Society impact modelling platform provide the corporate input. Academic expertise is provided by experienced and specialist teams from the Universities of Hull and Leeds. UoH's expertise in industrial environmental sustainability and UoL's through experience in evaluating and addressing social impacts throughout the extractive lifecycle. Pensana provides a real-world value chain against which this project explores innovative business model creation to ensure a sustainable and resilient RE supply chain.

There is a drive for the application of more sustainable, resource efficient, productivemanufacturing technologies to enable the manufacture of higher-performing, moreefficient products. Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers the ability to realise newgeometries, impossible to create using traditional manufacturing techniques, enabling radical new product designs through part consolidation and optimisation, allowing improved efficiencies and light-weighting. The aim of this project is to bring a new Additive Manufactured high performance,lightweight state-of-the-art actuator (Shock Absorber) to the motorsport and high performance vehicle (HPV) market, especially the Electric Vehicle (EV) market. The project is lead by R53 Engineering Ltd (designer and manufacturer of high-performance hydraulic actuators) who will develop novel lightweight and efficient actuator designs, supported by Matsuura Machinery Ltd and the University of Warwick, who will provide Design for Additive Manufacturing rules and material property information to R53 to ensure that the designs are capable of being manufactured using the state-of-the-art production rate Binder Jetting metal AM technologies. The benefits to the driving experience and vehicle dynamics of the actuators will be validated using the vehicle test facilities within Polestar, who will be an early adopter of this technology in their EVs

There is increasing industrial, regulatory and consumer demand for the use of greener alternatives across a range of everyday products, with a particular focus on formulated non-food items. It is also a key strategy for the UK government and manufacturers to use biobased alternatives to petrochemical-derived ingredients across the chemical industry. Bio-refining of a range of low-value biomass residues offers a way to produce intermediate chemicals to replace fossil-based materials, whilst simultaneously increasing their value and reducing their impact on the environment. However, current biorefining technologies are wasteful, inefficient and often unprofitable. Bio-Sep, using its novel, patented ultrasonic processing technology, aims to make a step-change in biorefining while stimulating investments in the UK bioeconomy. In collaboration with a strong consortium of global leaders in process innovation, chemicals, composites and automotives, Bio-Sep aims to optimise the Sonichem technology for specific, renewable, consistent, and widely-available UK biomass and generate platform chemicals directly relevant to the paints, coatings, cosmetics, construction, resins, pharmaceuticals, and additives markets. The consortium will explore the use of lignin to pioneer composite resin formulations that contain high-levels of renewable, non-petrochemical content, and utilise low-carbon feedstocks. As part of the project, applications of this material to composites for automotive applications will be investigated. The main outcome of the project will be optimised and validated ultrasonic fractionation of UK biomass residues, achieved in a commercially-viable and environmentally-sustainable manner under mild operating conditions, to produce high-quality lignin. The lignin will be demonstrated as suitable for the production of renewable, low carbon and bio-based feedstocks for composite materials relevant to the automotive sector. These outcomes allow Bio-Sep to provide a basis for the scaling of the innovation, promote the Sonichem biorefinery concept more widely, and advance subsequent commercialisation with exploitation partners across the chemicals industry.

Increasing levels of vehicle automation, driven by market demand and technology evolution, have led to a dramatic increase in functional software content and vehicle complexity. The testing of such systems presents a significant challenge for developers, deployers, regulators and insurers, who need to gain confidence in the safety, robustness and performance of these systems in the real world. Traditional automotive approaches to validation and verification would require an extremely protracted and ultimately impracticable test programme to achieve an appropriate level of test coverage. This is due to the complexity of the systems and their interactions with the surrounding environment, meaning that vast numbers of scenarios would need to be tested. CERTUS will address this challenge through the development of standardised processes where simulation techniques will be integrated to form a Digital Twin of the vehicle and its operational design domain. Delivering the capability to assure products virtually in a repeatable manner and with a high degree of confidence, which is critical to realising the ultimate goal of using virtual test for vehicle certification. Backed by a structured methodology which provides the level of rigour required to satisfy stakeholders, CERTUS will deliver robust simulation which optimises the quantity of physical testing whilst demonstrating the correlation of simulated performance to real world scenarios and ultimately reducing the time to market.