Large quantities of waste heat are continuously rejected from industries. Most of this waste energy, however, is of low-quality and is not practical or economical to recover it with current technologies. The Indus3Es project will develop an innovative Absorption Heat Transformer (AHT) for this purpose, focused on low temperature waste heat recovery (below 130ºC). The Indus3Es System will effectively recover and revalorize about 50% of the low-temperature waste heat, increasing quality of the waste source to the required temperature and reusing it again in the industrial process. The main objective is to develop an economically viable solution for industry, appropriate for new but also for existing plants and adaptable to various industrial processes. The developed system will be demonstrated in real environment in Tupras, a petrochemical industry in Turkey, enabling to analyze besides integration aspects, operational and business issues of Indus3Es System. Indus3Es System will be defined and optimized for different specificities in different sectors and industrial processes, for which up-scaling of the demonstrated technology and replication studies will be performed. Market potential evaluation and business analysis will be performed by industrial partners in order to guarantee a successful exploitation of the system in a short future. Indus3Es system will have a relevant impact making possible an energy efficiency increase and primary energy consumption of most energetic intensive industries in Europe. The embodied energy, the environmental footprint of the products and the manufacturing costs of energy intensive industries will be reduced, increasing the competitiveness of European products. Moreover, it will allow a sustainable economic activity for local “auxiliary” companies, usually SMEs, in high added value services related to the energy efficiency measures for industry.

The mushroom sector is an excellent example of circular economy to provide high quality protein from crop substrate based on bio-based agricultural wastes. Productivity is however highly sensitive to several biotic disorders among which fungal parasites are responsible for major crop losses. Although chemical fungicides have been historically employed to fight mycoparasites, regulatory limitations for mushroom growers and increasing consumer awareness are urgently requesting solutions to overcome fungicide dependence. Bacterial strains isolated in a previous research from the casing layer employed in mushroom cultivation have proved to selectively suppress germination and development of most harmful mycoparasites, while additionally selected microbiota proved to work as mushroom growth promoting microorganisms. This project aims to develop a tailor-made solution for the mushroom sector where a peat-free casing soil (peat is an unsustainably sourced on which the sector is highly dependent to produce the peat-based casing employed nowadays) will serve as carrier for the selected microbiota that will act as crop biostimulant. This solution will be validated industrially by 4 different mushroom farms across the EU which integrate all the European cropping systems. BIOSCHAMP will generate a solution to improve industrial profitability while reducing the agronomical need for pesticides by 90%. Additionally, BIOSCHAMP solution will introduce innovation within the industry that will lead to create jobs in low populated rural areas and to secure long-term viability of the sector while complying with regulatory restrictions for chemical fungicides and peat-based materials. To accomplish these ambitious goals, the BIOSCHAMP project features a multidisciplinary consortium representing a complete picture of the European mushroom sector and associated industry with high priority given to mushroom growers noteworthy lead by a growers association.

ECOLOOP project develops and demonstrates a set of solutions to optimise the combination of different energy distributed sources (biogas, biomass, agri-PV, geothermal), meeting the local needs for electricity, heating, cooling, transport and waste and land management in rural areas, fostering regional development and creating benefits for farmers and foresters. The project solutions will focus on promoting the reduction of carbon footprint in rural areas by means of the higher penetration of distributed renewable energy sources, self-consumption and an optimal agricultural/forest waste management, while creating positive effects in biodiversity and soil health and reducing the risk on groundwater contamination. Following this approach, ECOLOOP objectives are: • To optimise the production of biogas from agriculture and forestry wastes in situ. • To combine in an efficient and sustainable way different distributed renewable energy sources (biogas, biomass, agri-PV, geothermal), meeting the local needs for electricity, heating, cooling, transport and waste and land management in rural areas. • To develop innovative renewable-based agricultural protocols and advance bioproducts to increase sustainability and circularity while creating positive effects on biodiversity and soil health and groundwater pollution. • To foster regional development in rural areas. ECOLOOP project will move towards a circular economy in rural areas, focusing on agriculture and forestry sectors, contributing to job creation, gender equality, biodiversity and climate resilience and adaptation. All the benefits provided by ECOLOOP solutions will be demonstrated in 4 pilot sites in Spain, Estonia, Bulgaria and Slovenia, involving different forest and agriculture natural conditions (climate, soils), size and types of crops trees, management techniques, degree of mechanisation, geographic location and socio-economic factors, and considering the interaction of different types of energy sources.

A sizeable category in terms of organic content within MSW is represented by Absorbent Hygiene Products (AHPs; e.g. nappies, adult incontinence products, feminine hygiene items, wipes, etc.) waste, which is currently considered as non-recyclable fraction of MSW and finds its way to landfills or incineration, leading to important environmental concerns. Indeed, each year 8,500,000 tons of such waste are incinerated or landfilled in Europe (the equivalent of almost 30 landfills every year), and over 30,000,000 tons in the world. AHP are mainly composed of a mix of natural fibres (cellulose) and polymers (PP/PE and superabsorbent polymer), valuable materials that currently don’t find a proper valorization. Within EMBRACED project, a first-of-its-kind multi-purpose integrated biorefinery will be established in order to valorize in a relevant environment scenario the cellulosic fractions obtained from AHP waste towards the production of bio-products of significant commercial interest, and – concurrently – high added-value co-products, such polyolefinic plastics and SAP (superabsorbent polymers). This innovative biorefinery model will involve all the main actors of the whole value chain, from AHP consumers and local population to waste management and logistic companies, leading AHP producers and bioprocess developers, as well as final products developers. In a view of circular economy, all the fractions obtained from the processed AHP waste will be reused through valorization into final products, and in particular the high-quality cellulosic fraction of AHP (ca. 1,275,000 ton/y in Europe), which has significant advantages vs. traditional 2nd generation lignocellulosic feedstocks in terms of homogeneity and downstream bioprocessing costs, will be converted and valorized in two parallel value chains, leading to the production of biobased building blocks, polymers and fertilizers.