Who has never enjoyed the smell of a wood fire during a winter walk? In fact, behind this positive feeling, you smell the good odor of benzene or naphatlene which are nothing but VOCs and PAHs emitted during the combustion of wood. These compounds can be found in the atmosphere in gaseous form or adsorbed on the surface of soot particles emitted during wood combustion (WC). To put it another way, although wood energy is considered a green energy that is carbon neutral, it is not without impact on both the environment and human health. Indeed, air pollution, especially particulate pollution, is responsible for 48,000 deaths each year in France and more than 400,000 deaths in Europe. It is mainly the fine particles (PM2,5) which are pointed out, they are more numerous and more dangerous because of their propensity to penetrate deeply into the body and to go up to the pulmonary alveoli/blood exchange. These are mainly emitted by the residential sector, and more precisely, by domestic wood-burning appliances. It is to be noted that wood-energy is the first renewable energy in the energy mix both in France and in Europe. This sector represents 10% of the total European energy mix (2016). In view of these data and, taking into account the substantial effort required by Europe for the development of renewable energies, the part of wood energy in the final energy mix must be multiplied by 2 by 2030 to achieve those objectives. Since energy transition must not lead to human health and environment threats, the European Union has tightened requirements concerning the emissions of WC appliances with the Ecodesign directive which took effect in january 2022. This directive fixes the values of the emissions (gaseous pollutants and particles) to be respected by the residential combustion system put on the market in the future. Considering the lifetime of this kind of appliances and the current range of solutions, it is urgent to offer an innovative and novel retrofit solution that will really impact air quality at the level of the emissions. Two kinds of particules are emitted by wood residential wood combustion (RWC) : 1) “primary” particles which are directly emitted by the combustion process, 2) the “secondary” particles which are formed in the atmosphere from gaseous precursors as VOC or PAH. The grand challenge of the WC sector is on developing a remediation system able to simultaneously decrease fine particles and some gaseous pollutants. OLLIWOOD will be the project that will offer to suppliers the potential to develop a functionalized media allowing simultaneous decrease of particles and gaseous pollutants emitted by the RWC. If successful, OLLIWOOD will open the path to the future adoption of such novel media by developing a system which is adapted to residential use which means that the process must be designed in order to limit the drop pressure, the maintenance, the cost and the size. For that, our starting hypothesis is on developing a process that would involve the oxidizing potential of the particles resulting from WC and finally concretized all the research that has been performed on the oxidative potential of particles. By definition, the oxidative potential of particles is their capacity to induce a secondary reaction with other components. Based on the properties of the particles, the target is to develop a remedial process allowing to oxydise the particles to avoid clogging the filter. In order to give itself the means to complete this project, the considering consortium should consist of 6-7 partners with complementary skills and experimental facilities whose interaction in this project is essential to achieve the objectives of this proposal. Currently 4 partners have responded favorably (IMT-Atlantique, CSTB, LORFLAM and Eastern University of Finland), 1 is under discussion (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano) and 2 are being contacted (Technical University of Denmark and Instituto de Carboquemica).

Intelligent Energy Europe expects district heating to double its share of the European heat market by 2020 while district cooling will grow to 25%. While this expansion will translate into 2.6% reduction in the European primary energy need and 9.3% of all carbon emissions, it will not be achieved through modernization and expansion alone but requires fundamental technological innovation to make the next generation of district heating and cooling (DHC) systems highly efficient and cost effective to design, operate and maintain. E2District aims to develop, deploy, and demonstrate a novel cloud enabled management framework for DHC systems, which will deliver compound energy cost savings of 30% through development of a District Simulation Platform to optimise DHC asset configuration targeting >5% energy reduction, development of intelligent adaptive DHC control and optimisation methods targeting an energy cost reduction between 10 and 20%, including flexible production, storage and demand assets, and system-level fault detection and diagnostics, development of behaviour analytics and prosumer engagement tools to keep the end user in the loop, targeting overall energy savings of 5%. Development of a flexible District Operation System for the efficient, replicable and scalable deployment of DHC monitoring, intelligent control, FDD and prosumer engagement, development of novel business models for DHC Operators, Integrators and Designers, validation, evaluation, and demonstration of the E2District platform, and development of strong and rigorous dissemination, exploitation and path-to-market strategies to ensure project outcomes are communicated to all DHC stakeholders. E2District addresses specifically the call’s objective related to the development of optimisation, control, metering, planning and modelling tools including consumer engagement and behaviour analytics and supports the integration of multiple generation sources, including renewable energy and storage.