Geothermal is the most under-utilized of renewable sources due to high investment costs and long development cycle. A big part (53%) of the cost is in drilling and it is time-dependent. Geo-Drill aims to reduce drilling cost with increased ROP and reduced tripping with improved tools lives. Geo-Drill is proposing drilling technology incorporating bi-stable fluidic amplifier driven mud hammer, low cost 3D printed sensors & cables, drill monitoring system, Graphene based materials and coatings. Geo-Drill fluidic amplifier driven hammer is less sensitive to issues with mud and tolerances, less impact of erosion on hammer efficiency and it continues to operate with varying mud quality in efficient manner. It is also less affected by the environmental influences such as shocks, vibrations, accelerations, temperature and high pressures. Low cost and robust 3D-printed sensors & cables along the surface of the whole length of the drill string provides real-time high bandwidth data during drilling; e.g. estimation of rock formation hardness, mud flow speed, density, temp, etc. Flow assurance simulations combined with sensor readings and knowledge-based system will assist in optimizing drilling parameters and cuttings transport performance and safety conditions. Graphene's ability to tune the particular form lends itself uniquely as a component in a wide variety of matrices for coating developments with enhanced adhesion and dispersion properties and improved resistance to abrasion, erosion, corrosion and impact. Placing few mm hard-strength materials on drill bit, drill stabilizer through diffusion bonding improves their wear resistance and improve the lifetime. Geo-Drill's hammers improved efficiency and lifetime, drill parameter optimisation and CTP via sensors, reduced time in replacing tools with improved lifetime work together to improve ROP & lifetime resulting in reduced drilling time. Thereby, Geo-Drill will reduce drilling cost by 29-60%.

Future energy systems will face serious operational challenges with system reliability due to fluctuations caused by progressive integration of solar and wind power. Reliable and sustainable energy sources that can be utilized in large parts of Europe and that are able to balance these fluctuations are needed. Geothermal energy has the potential to become an excellent source for both base and flexible energy demands, providing much lower environmental footprint than both fossil and biomass fuels, as well as much less risks and societal resistance than nuclear power. There are however some techno-economic challenges which needs to be addressed to facilitate highly flexible operation of geothermal power plants. In GeoSmart, we propose to combine thermal energy storages with flexible ORC solutions to provide a highly flexible operational capability of a geothermal installation. During periods with low demand, energy will be stored in the storage to be released at a later stage when the demand is higher. As this approach does not influence the flow condition at the wellhead, critical infrastructures will be unaffected under variable energy generation. To improve efficiency, we also propose a hybrid cooling system for the ORC plant to prevent efficiency degradation due to seasonal variations. Efficiency will be further improved by larger power plant heat extraction enabled due to a scaling reduction system consisting of specially design retention tank, heat exchanger, and recombining with extracted gases. The scaling reduction system has the potential to almost double power production of many medium enthalpy geothermal plants. Overall, GeoSmart technologies will drastically reduce geothermal energy costs, making it cost competitive with its fossil fuel-based counterparts. To bring GeoSmart technology to TRL7/8, we will demonstrate it in a medium/high (Turkey) and low (Belgium) temperature fields to show its potential benefits and applicability in different settings.

The Geo-coat project has been specified as necessary by our geothermal power and equipment manufacturing members, who, in order to reliably provide energy, need to improve plant capability to withstand corrosion, erosion and scaling from geofluids, to maintain the equipment up-time and generation efficiency. Additionally they need to be able to produce better geothermal power plant equipment protection design concepts through virtual prototyping to meet the increasing requirements for life cycle costs, environmental impacts and end-of-life considerations. Current materials, transferred from oil and gas applications to these exceptionally harsh environments, (and the corresponding design models) are not capable of performing, leading to constant need to inspect and repair damage. The Geo-coat project will develop new resistant materials in the form of high performance coatings of novel targeted "High Entropy Alloys" and Cermets, thermally applied to the key specified vulnerable process stages (components in turbines, valves, pumps, heat exchangers and pipe bends) in response to the specific corrosion and erosion forces we find at each point. We will also capture the underlying principles of the material resistance, to proactively design the equipment for performance while minimising overall capex costs from these expensive materials. The Geo-coat consortium has user members from geothermal plant operations and equipment manufacture to ensure the project's focus on real-world issues, coupled with world-leading experience in the development of materials, protective coatings and their application to harsh environments. In addition to developing the new coating materials and techniques, we also aim to transfer our experiences from the development of Flow Assurance schemes for Oil&Gas and Chemical industries to provide a new overarching set of design paradigms and generate an underpinning Knowledge Based System.

The MODERATOR project aims to improve the overall energy efficiency of data centres by developing an integrated system based on immersion cooling combined with novel and highly efficient long-term heat storage materials and systems. The main innovations of the project are related to the development and integration of individual components, which include (i) a novel designed immersion cooling system that enables heat recovery from data centres, (ii) a novel waste heat recovery (WHR) system using phase change materials (PCMs) for efficient low-temperature heat recovery, (iii) a highly efficient multilayer insulation system for thermal energy storage (TES) that uses recycled glass granules and microparticles to minimize heat losses and (iv) the integration of these components into an automated prototype for direct heat utilization and long-term storage. Furthermore, the project employs modeling and simulation activities, evaluation tools and dissemination methods to increase the exploitation potential of the developed technologies. The major outcome will be the operation and demonstration of a fully automated integrated prototype combining a 40 kW data centre immersion cooling system and a 500 kWh TES for WHR (TRL8). Potential utilization options of the stored thermal energy (i.e. space heating and electricity generation) will also be demonstrated within the project. The successful implementation of the MODERATOR project will have multiple impacts on different sectors. To accomplish all these results, the MODERATOR project will build upon the wide expertise of its 11 partners. In particular, the consortium consists of 3 research organizations and 8 SMEs with experience on various research and technological areas including materials science, systems design, process engineering, systems operation, modeling and simulation, technoeconomic, environmental and socioeconomic assessment, roadmap design, dissemination and communication, etc.