ARENHA (Advanced materials and Reactors for Energy storage tHrough Ammonia) is a European project with global impact seeking to develop, integrate and demonstrate key material solutions enabling the use of ammonia for flexible, safe and profitable storage and utilization of energy. Ammonia is an excellent energy carrier due to its high energy density, carbon-free composition, industrial know-how and relative ease of storage. ARENHA demonstrates the feasibility of ammonia as a dispatchable form of large-scale energy storage, enabling the integration of renewable electricity in Europe and creating global green energy corridors for Europe energy import diversification. Innovative Materials are developed and integrated into ground-breaking systems in order to demonstrate a flexible and profitable power-to-ammonia value chain but also several key energy discharge processes. Specifically, ARENHA will develop advanced SOEC for renewable hydrogen production, catalysts for low temperature/pressure ammonia synthesis, solid absorbents for ammonia synthesis intensification and storage, catalysts and membrane reactors for ammonia decomposition. Energy discharge processes studied in ARENHA tackle various applications from ammonia decomposition into pure H2 for FCEV, direct ammonia utilization on SOFCs for power and ICEs for mobility. ARENHA will demonstrate the full power-to-ammonia-to-usage value chain at TRL 5 and the outstanding potential of green ammonia to address the issue of large scale energy storage through LCA, sociological survey, techno-economic analysis deeply connected with multiscale modeling. ARENHA’s ambitious objectives will be tackled by a consortium of 11 partners from universities, RTO, SMEs and large companies covering the adequate set of skills and market positioning. Considering the global nature of the ARENHA project, the consortium will strongly interact with its international advisory board composed of key energy stakeholders from the 5 continents.

INNOMEM gathers some of the most recognised Membrane departments (>20) in Europe and acknowledged facilitators of technology transfer, corporate finance, funding and coaching, making available (i) the most promising and breakthrough manufacturing pilots and (ii) advanced characterization techniques and modelling together with (iii) non-technical services through this Test Bed: while relevant improvement metrics can be defined, the potential network of reachable stakeholders counts thousands of businesses on an international scale. Key facts are reported below. Within the scope of INNOMEM, main different types of membrane materials (polymeric, ceramic, metallic and nanocomposite), surface modification, membrane morphology and geometry and applications will be covered, providing for the first time a single entry point for industrial partners, mainly SMEs, aspiring to answer their concerns but with minimum investment costs and reduction of risks associated with technology transfer, while opening-up opportunities for demonstration of innovative nanomembranes in real life industrial problems (TRL7) and thus faster opening the market for these new products. The main KPIs for INNOMEM: Technical: 20% Membrane productivity improvement, 30% faster verification, >40% CO2 emissions and energy consumption reduction. Non-Technical: 10 Showcases, >15 Democases, >100 reachable SMEs and > 300 reachable investors. INNOMEM stems from the consideration that the development of products based on advanced membranes and nanomaterials require access to finance and an optimised business planning, relying on a sound prior analysis of the market, of the economic impacts and capacity of a company. The project aims at developing and organizing a sustainable Open Innovation Test Bed (OITB) for nano-enabled membranes for different applications. The OITB will also offer a network of facilities and services through a Single Entry Point (SEP) to companies (inside or outside Europe).

The ongoing energy system digitization is making available an enormous amount of data, paving the way for data sharing-enabled cross-value chain services, which may contribute to system-level increased efficiency and hence facilitate the energy transition. However data sharing in the energy sector is lagging behind, mainly due to lack of trust, privacy breaches risk and business models immaturity. In that respect ENERSHARE will a) deliver a Reference Architecture for a European Energy Data Space, which hybridizes SGAM with IDSA and GAIA-X architectures, by bringing data value chain perspective into the energy one b) evolve interoperability, trust, data value and governance building blocks to TRL 6-7 IDSA-compliant ones, adapt them to energy sector, and deploy: 1) across-energy and cross-sector data enhancement technology enablers and standardizable interfaces and open APIs by leveraging on open Standards (e.g. ETSI Context Broker) and ontologies (e.g. SAREF 2) trust-related connectors, to ensure privacy, confidentiality, cybersecurity-preserving trust, sovereignty and full control of data 3) Blockchain/Smart contract-enriched marketplace for data versus energy assets/services coordination, sharing, exchange, and beyond financial compensation 4) cross-value chain value-added services and Digital Twins, by leveraging on privacy-preserving federated learning c) integrate and deploy them within a Reference Implementation of a European Energy Data Space, which will be demonstrated along 7 pilots and 11 intra-electricity, intra-energy and beyond energy use cases d) co-design SSH-based consumer-centric business models for energy data sharing enabling data beyond-financial value creation and spreading along value chain d) prepare the ground for the European Energy Data Space setup, through alignment with EU-level relevant initiatives (GAIA-X, IDSA, BDVA, ETIP SNET, BRIDGE), contributing to Data Space standardization and boosting a level playing field for data sharing.

The MACBETH consortium provides a breakthrough technology for advanced downstream processing by combining catalytic synthesis with the corresponding separation units in a single highly efficient catalytic membrane reactor (CMR). This disruptive technology has the ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of large volume industrial process by up to 45 %. Additionally, resource and energy efficiency will be increased by up to 70%. The revolutionary new reactor design will not only guarantee substantially smaller and safer production plants, but has also a tremendous competitive advantage since CAPEX is decreased by up to 50% and OPEX by up to 80%. The direct industrial applicabilty will be demonstrated by the long term operation of TRL 7 demo plants for the highly relevant and large scale processes: hydroformylation, hydrogen production, propane dehydrogenation. The confidence of the MACBETH consortium to reach its highly ambitious goals are underlined by two special extensions that go well beyond the ordinary scope of an EU project: 1) Transfer of CMR technology to biotechnology: Within MACBETH we will demonstrate that starting from building blocks of TRL 5 (not from a TRL 5 pilot plant), that fit the requirements of selective enzymatical cleavage of fatty acids with the combined support and system knowledge of the experienced CMR partners, a TRL 7 demo plant will be established and operated 2) Creation of the spin-off European “Lighthouse Catalytic Membrane Reactors” (LCMR) within MACBETH: A European competence center for CMR will be established already within the MACBETH project with an actual detailed business plan including partner commitment. These efforts will ultimately lead to the foundation of the “Lighthouse Catalytic Membrane Reactors” (LCMR) that will provide access to the combined knowledge of the MACBETH project .

The REFLEX project aims at developing an innovative renewable energies storage solution, the “Smart Energy Hub”, based on reversible Solid Oxide Cell (rSOC) technology, that is to say able to operate either in electrolysis mode (SOEC) to store excess electricity to produce H2, or in fuel cell mode (SOFC) when energy needs exceed local production, to produce electricity and heat again from H2 or any other fuel locally available. The challenging issue of achieving concomitantly high efficiency, high flexibility in operation and cost optimum is duly addressed through improvements of rSOC components (cells, stacks, power electronics, heat exchangers) and system, and the definition of advanced operation strategies. The specifications, detailed system design and the advanced operation strategies are supported by modelling tasks. An in-field demonstration will be performed in a technological park, where the Smart Energy Hub will be coupled to local solar and mini-hydro renewable sources and will provide electricity and heat to the headquarters of the park. It will demonstrate, in a real environment, the high power-to-power round-trip efficiency of this technology and its flexibility in dynamic operation, thus moving the technology from Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3 to 6. The Smart Energy Hub being modular, made of multistacks/multimodules arrangements, scale up studies will be performed to evaluate the techno-economic performance of the technology to address different scales of products for different markets. To reach these objectives, REFLEX is a cross multidisciplinary consortium gathering 9 organisations from 6 member states (France, Italy, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland). The partnership covers all competences necessary: cells and stacks development and testing (ELCOGEN, CEA, DTU), power electronics (USE, GPTech), system design and manufacturing (SYLFEN), system modelling (VTT), field test (Envipark), techno-economical and market analysis (ENGIE).