POP-MACHINA aims to demonstrate the power and potential of the maker movement and collaborative production for the EU circular economy. We draw from a number of cut-edge technologies (factory-of-the-future, blockchain) and disciplines (urban planning, architecture) to provide the support necessary to overcome scaling issues; a typical drawback of collaborative production; to find the areas more in need of our intervention and to reconfigure unused spaces. We put forth an elaborate community engagement program to network, incentivize and stimulate through maker faires and events existing and new maker communities in all our municipalities. We build upon the current informal curriculum for maker skills development by nurturing the social side and we put educators and makers together to exchange ideas on the training modalities. A particular focus on the skill development of women and vulnerable groups will aim to empower these (underrepresented) segments to partake actively in collaborative production. In every pilot area we will demonstrate business oriented collaborative production of feasible and sustainable concepts from secondary raw material or other sustainable inputs, based on the needs and preferences of the local stakeholders. A thorough impact assessment framework with increased scope (e.g. social) will be co-designed with stakeholders after short basic assessment trainings and will be used in the assessment of our pilot work. Based on the findings we will kick-start a series of policy events to discuss openly – without pushing our results – the tax and legal barriers that hamper collaborative production.

PEACOC will showcase a first-of-a-kind economically and environmentally viable pre-commercial metallurgical system for recovering Precious Metals (PMs) (i.e. Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) identified as critical raw materials by the European Commission (EC), as well as gold (Au) and silver (Ag)), highly important for the EU economy, from a wide variety of abundant end-of-life (EPEACOC will showcase a first-of-a-kind economically and environmentally viable pre-commercial metallurgical system for recovering Precious Metals (PMs) (i.e. Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) identified as critical raw materials by the European Commission (EC), as well as gold (Au) and silver (Ag)), highly important for the EU economy, from a wide variety of abundant end-of-life (EoL) products in Europe. The concept is mainly based on previously developed recovery and refining technologies to TRL 5 in the PLATIRUS Research and Innovation project (Micro-Wave assisted leaching and Gas Diffusion Electrocrystallization GDEx), which were flagged by the Innovation Radar initiative of the EC as excellent innovations and showed a significant cost reduction and lower environmental impact compared to state-of-the-art hydrometallurgical processes as will be shown throughout the proposal. The PEACOC system will be demonstrated at pre-commercial scale at TRL7 with capacity to treat ~50t of PMs concentrates/year i.e., with a recovery capacity of i)2 kg PGMs/week from spent autocatalysts (containing ~2.5kg PGMs/t), ii) 0.5-1 kg Au/week from Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA) with a focus on low and medium grade PCBA (containing 20-100 g Au/t) that are currently poorly valorized in industrial smelting processes due to low PM concentrations, and iii) 10 kg Ag/week from EoL Photovoltaic (PV) panels (containing ~3-10 kg Ag/t) which will be an abundant resource in Europe in the coming few years. The project will demonstrate the production of PMs at a profit margin up to 80% with respect to current PMs market prices.