Agri-food industry generates nearly 50% of the average composition of global waste in form of organic residual stream. Current management practices for waste management, including landfilling as the worst option, have to be improved to fulfil the targets of the EU. Agri-food residual streams are a potential substitute of fossil-based resources and have an important added value if used as feedstock in for the BBI, but present a high complexity and variables mixture of molecules, which makes difficult its valorisation. For this reason, the integration of a deeper knowledge on composition, logistics and volume of various organic streams could support the decision-making process to maximise profit from a specific feedstock and to select the most appropriate technologies for its optimal valorisation . The main project objective is to develop and validate at a relevant environment, the MODEL2BIO Decision-Support System tool. This will be an innovative concept that using predictive models, will estimate i) the agri-food industry residual streams composition (considering the seasonality, territorial features and origin); ii) the best recommended ways for valorising it. These recommendations will be made under a holistic perspective (technical, economic, environmental and social), with the prioritisation of the valorisation possibilities through technical and economic criteria and the final decision through holistic criteria. This innovative tool is based on the interconnection of three complementary elements: Simulation module, Optimisation algorithm and the LCA module. MODEL2BIO consortium consist on a multidisciplinary team of 11 partners from 5 different countries, covering the whole value chain and containing RTDs, universities, SMEs and clusters, and the active involvement of 27 companies providing residual streams, production process data and validating the MODEL2BIO tool. MODEL2BIO Budget is 5.970.976,16€ and request 4.730.393,8€ for funding.

The EMB3Rs project will implement a bottom-up, user-driven and open source modelling platform to simulate alternative supply-demand scenarios for the recovery and reuse of industrial excess heat and cold (HC). EMB3Rs’ final users will employ the platform to determine the costs and benefits related with excess HC utilization routes, and to define the required implementation conditions for the most promising solutions. The platform will allow industrial users and other relevant stakeholders to autonomously and intuitively explore and assess the feasibility of new technology and business scenarios. This will benefit each individual producer/ consumer in a given industrial community but also enable win-win solutions between industries and final HC users in other sectors. The main aim is to reuse and/or trade excess thermal energy in a holistic perspective within an industrial process HC/energy system environment or framed in an HC network in regulated or liberalized markets. The resource and energy intensive industries (REII) and DHC networks will be able to use and rely on the EMB3Rs platform to investigate the revenue potential of using industrial excess HC as an energy (re)source. The REII will be able to evaluate the benefits of investing in low carbon options, such as the integration of renewable HC technologies and thermal storage, in industrial processes. Ultimately, by translating industrial excess HC into savings, revenues and increased overall system efficiency, EMB3Rs will allow the REII community to improve its competitiveness, foster and accelerate the decarbonisation of the HC market overall and contribute to the EU climate change mitigation goals. Namely by i) contributing to overcome the barriers for developing and deploying in HC solutions, i.e. reaching a critical mass of users, iii) identifying critical framework conditions and success factors and iv) promoting transfer and replication of solutions in other industrial sectors and iv) stimulating the convergence between energy, energy efficiency goals, CO2 reduction and business interests.

The vision of RECLAIM is to demonstrate technologies and strategies to support a new paradigm for refurbishment and re-manufacturing of large industrial equipment in factories, paving the way to a circular economy. Its ultimate goal is to save valuable resources by reusing equipment instead of discarding them. RECLAIM will support legacy industrial infrastructures with advanced technological solutions with built-in capabilities for in-situ repair, self-assessment and optimal re-use strategies. It will establish new concepts and strategies for repair and equipment upgrade and factory layouts’ redesign in order to gain economic benefits to the manufacturing sector. The technological core of RECLAIM is a novel Decision Support Framework that guides the optimal refurbishment and re-manufacturing of electromechanical machines and robotics systems. The framework uses IoT sensors, novel prediction, and process optimisation techniques to offer machine lifetime extension and thus increased productivity. Innovative fog computing and augmented reality techniques are combined with enhanced health monitoring and failure inspection and diagnosis methodologies that enhance the effective use of materials, improve maintenance capabilities and eventually, drastically increase the return of investments (ROI). RECLAIM re-use approach also fosters servicing and upgrading of legacy equipment. For that, European machinery industry will move from an equipment-based business to a value-added business, where equipment servicing and equipment knowledge are main business drivers. RECLAIM solution will be demonstrated in five real industrial environments to evaluate the lifecycle of the industrial equipment and show the feasibility of the approach for integration and scale-up to other industrial sectors. Having RECLAIM technology available, drastically increased efficiency, lifetime extension and high economic benefit will be achieved and a significant step towards 100% re-use will be made.

ALLIANCE aims to broaden the uptake of microalgae-based products in the EU market, improving the cost-effectiveness, circularity, and overall sustainability of production, processing and product development steps. Our ambition is to demonstrate the effective establishment of algae-based mid-value ingredients using multi-product biorefineries for food, cellular agriculture, aquafeed, and agriculture sectors. Previous sustainability and cost analyses clearly pointed at our R&I targets: recirculating nutrients and water, ALLIANCE aims to expand access to microalgae-based products in the EU market, making it cheaper and more sustainable. Our ambition is to demonstrate multiproduct biorefineries for food, aquafeed, and agriculture ingredients. Our previous sustainability and cost analyses clearly pointed at our R&I targets: recirculating nutrients and water, efficient and automated control of production, reducing nutrient consumption, prioritizing renewable energy and off-the-grid operation, and solvent-free biorefinery processes. We will focus on vertical integration of upstream and downstream processes, developing and demonstrating technological solutions on the targets above for four different existing algae pipelines, which will expand from 4 into 15 lines of fractions/products (and near-zero waste). ALLIANCE will use solvent-free extraction and purification technologies that are scalable and cost-competitive, as well as wet-biomass, bypassing the dewatering process. The ingredients will feed an integrated exploitation strategic plan to identify different business cases and their timelines and markets. We will work in a multidisciplinary and multi-actor approach, with a broad group of stakeholders joining us in reaching European consumers and supporting the penetration and acceptance of microalgal biobased products. Finally, we will collaborate with policy-making communities to propose concrete solutions for addressing gaps in legislation and regulatory frameworks.