The QUEEN project, with its strong consortium of participants from eight countries, addresses a significant challenge - EU's heavy reliance on external sources for critical raw materials, especially metallurgical silicon (MG-Si). Currently, over 80% of MG-Si, vital for high-tech applications and EU's sustainability ambitions, is imported mainly from China. QUEEN aims to exploit an underutilized resource; quartz sand from European quarries, to domestically produce MG-Si in a sustainable and efficient way. The unique approach combines raw material extraction and refinement with an environmental focus, leveraging waste materials in the process. This strategy is projected to bolster EU's MG-Si production capacity, foster sector-specific innovation, and advance eco-friendly practices. The QUEEN project's overall objective is to create an environmentally friendly process for producing metallurgical silicon (MG-Si) from quarry sands, with near-zero CO2 emissions. This transformational approach could turn any EU quartz quarry into a potential MG-Si reservoir. Moreover, the technologies developed could be adapted to other materials. The technical objective is to devise a new mineralogical separation process based on flotation for quarry sands extraction. This objective aims to pioneer a more effective and greener alternative process for refining high-purity quartz and Potassium Feldspars. Comprising R&D and industry stakeholders from mineral separation and MG-Si refinement fields, the project plans pilot tests at TRL 7. QUEEN aims to cover 56% of MG-Si EU demand by 2032 by recovering more than 300Mt MG-Si from sands, alongside saving about 232,000 Mt CO2 by substituting coal with cleaner materials. Like this, QUEEN aims to support the EU strategic autonomy and sustainability, mirroring its green ambitions.

Decarbonization of processes, scarcity of raw materials and Europe independence on key resources, valorisation of industrial waste are all key and strong challenges the EU metallurgy industry is facing and will have to deal with in the next decades to remain sustainable while keeping its economic competitiveness. This is particularly true for the manganese (Mn) & Mn ferroalloys industries. HAlMan represents a game changer in the metallurgical industry in view of developing sustainable processes with low carbon footprint, low energy consumption, no solid waste generation, valorisation of secondary raw materials from mining and metallurgical industry. HAlMan will demonstrate at TRL 7 an integrated process to produce Mn metal and Mn alloys from Mn ores and Mn-containing waste by using hydrogen and secondary aluminum (Al) sources as reductants. As metallurgical processes have large share in CO2 emission, decarbonization in metallurgical industry is essential to operate metal production in Europe. The benefits of the HAlMan innovative process will go beyond Mn and Mn Ferroalloys industries, and it presents a unique intersectoral approach in circular economy where: • Al-containing dross/scrap, and waste from ferromanganese industry are valorised to produce directly new Al-Mn master alloys for Al and Steel industries • metallurgical grade alumina (the feedstock for Al production, produced almost exclusively from Bauxite which is a CRM for EU) is produced via a zero-carbon footprint process • the extraction of critical raw materials, including REEs, from the alumina production process by-products will be demonstrated • the production of manganese oxide and cell fabrication for lithium-ion battery applications will be demonstrated. Additionally, HAlMan project studies heat and hydrogen recovery from process gas to improve process economy and yield. Significant activities on Life cycle assessment, Business development, dissemination and communication will be carried.

Global Manganese-alloys (Mn) are highly linked to the steel sector for key engineering applications in Europe. In 2017, Mn-alloy production was approx. 4 Mio tons, required 12,200 GWh electrical energy and emitted around 14.2 Mio tons of CO2. Therefore, an energy intensive and inherent cross-sectorial value chain that is, nowadays, led by the Asian market demand. PREMA is an ambitious initiative that aims at demonstrating an innovative suite of technologies (involving heat recovery and solar technologic approaches) that allow to pre-treat Mn ores, utilising more efficiently energy and material streams and decreasing direct and indirect CO2 emissions (along with SO2 and NOx). LCA and LCCA methodologies will be implemented from early stages to ensure the technical, economic and environmental viability of the solution across the whole Mn-alloys’ value chain. The vision of PREMA is thus to make the Mn-alloys sector in Europe more flexible, sustainable and attractive. In order to cover the whole value chain, there is a strong presence of South African (SA) partners in the consortium, SA being the top 1 in high quality Mn ores’ extraction and exports worldwide. A win-win situation in order to strengthen the Mn-alloys and steel value chains in Europe. PREMA consortium puts together a total of 11 production facilities spread over Europe and SA among 4 Mn producers, representing an aggregated process capacity of 380 MW (Transalloys in SA, Eramet in France and Norway, Ferroglobe in Norway and Spain and OFZ in Slovakia). The innovative character of the project is brought by major players in R&D across Europe and SA, with the Norwegian organisation SINTEF as coordinator. Last but not least, clustering with other EU initiatives, including other SPIRE projects, will be paid special attention in order to create awareness of the project developments from early stages of the demonstration.