REMAGHIC is focused on contributing to Europe’s rare earth recovery and magnesium recycling technologies, improving the efficiencies of these processes and advancing the technology readiness levels for a new generation of industrial processes that will produce new low cost competitive alloys for a wide variety of sectors across Europe’s manufacturing value chain. The project motivation lies on the fact that magnesium alloys can offer a significant weight reduction when compared to aluminium alloys. weight reduction is a cross sectorial key design driver, if a superior energy absorption and vibratory behaviour is added, magnesium is promising candidate for future application if some of its drawbacks are overcome, such as its cost, manufacturability problems, corrosion and creep behaviour and low allowable service temperature. Addition of Rare Earth Elements (REE) improves the performance of Mg alloys significantly, though a price increase has to be taken into account. REMAGHIC believes that by investing in recovery and recycling technologies, a new alloying process can be developed to yield low cost Mg+REE alloys. In order to do this, REE that are usually stockpiled (Ce, La) in favour of the most demanded ones (Nd, Dy) will be considered as attractive candidates to lower the price. This list of REE will be completed by other promising candidates found in the literature (Y, Gd, Sa). The project will contribute to reducing the dependency of the supply of critical elements (REE and Mg) on sources exterior to the EU and to solving the REE Balance Problem. REMAGHIC will contribute to the penetration of magnesium alloys in important sectors for the European industry (Transport, Energy, Biomedicine); it will foster the work done by Tier1s, and promote the interest of different OEMs on future generations of light structural components of competitive performance (that of primary Mg+REE alloys), low cost (that of primary Mg) and weight reduction (30%).

The CROCODILE project will showcase innovative metallurgical systems based on advanced pyro-, hydro-, bio-, iono- and electrometallurgy technologies for the recovery of cobalt and the production of cobalt metal and upstream products from a wide variety of secondary and primary European resources. CROCODILE will demonstrate the synergetic approaches and the integration of the innovative metallurgical systems within existing recovery processes of cobalt from primary and secondary sources at different locations in Europe, to enhance their efficiency, improve their economic and environmental values, and will provide a zero-waste strategy for important waste streams rich in cobalt such as batteries. Additionally, CROCODILE will produce a first of a kind economically and environmentally viable mobile commercial metallurgical system based on advanced hydrometallurgical and electrochemical technologies able to produce cobalt metal from black mass containing cobalt from different sources of waste streams such as spent batteries and catalysts. The new established value chain in this project will bring together for the first time major players who have the potential of supplying 10,000 ton of cobalt annually in the mid-term range from European resources, corresponding to about 65% of the current overall EU industrial demand. Therefore, the project will reduce drastically the very high supply risk of cobalt for Europe, provide SMEs with novel business opportunities, and consolidate the business of large refineries with economically and environmentally friendly technologies and decouple their business from currently unstable supply of feedstocks.

CREAToR focusses on process development and demonstration (to TRL 5) to remove hazardous, already banned bromine-containing flame-retardants from waste streams using continuous purification technologies (supercritical CO2 and cost-effective solvent-based processes using natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES)) in twin-screw extruders. CREAToR will cover the whole value chain, starting from collecting thermoplastic waste streams from building and construction (B&C) and from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). Respective recyclers and sorters of both industries are part of the CREAToR consortium. The project will implement ways to collect secondary raw materials, identify the presence of hazardous flame retardants, remove these contaminants from the materials and finally reuse the materials. As case studies they will be reused as valuable secondary raw materials for new B&C insulation panels, closing the circle of economy, for automotive interior application, and for producing 3 D printed parts for aerospace applications. The respective end user partners are also part of the CREAToR consortium. For further increasing the economic feasibility of the approach an optimised logistic concept and a harmonized material quality classification scheme will be developed and applied. CREAToR will create a circular economy solution, transforming waste streams that are currently incinerated at costs of >180 €/t (especially from the B&C and WEEE sector) into value-bringing secondary raw materials. The economic viability of CREAToR will be validated through material benchmarking and LCA/LCC assessment for the whole value chain resulting in next generation products. The strong industrial/recycler presence in the consortium (12 industrial partners, among them three recyclers, six SMEs, and six large enterprises) will ensure the market relevance of the developments and the rapid commercialisation of the results within 1-2 years after the end of the project.