Vehicles are composed by different materials and a noticeable and fundamental fraction of them (20% w/w) is constituted by plastic material, among which polyurethanes. PU is fundamental since, thanks to its properties, it enables to reduce the overall weight of the car, resulting also in a lower fuel consumption. More and more vehicles’ manufacturers and suppliers are betting on biobased alternatives derived from renewable raw materials, but a biobased plastic able to mimic technical properties of PUs as well as to provide the required aesthetics and haptics has not been developed yet. The BIOMOTIVE project will pave the ground towards the production and subsequent market penetration of biobased automotive interior parts with enhanced technical performance, improved environmental profile and economic competitiveness, with the aim of replacing the fossil-based, non-biodegradable counterparts. Within the project, innovative and advanced biobased materials with an increased biobased content (60-80%), i.e. thermoplastic polyurethanes, 2-components thermoset polyurethane foams and regenerated natural fibres, will be produced starting from renewable biomass feedstock not in competition with food and feed, leveraging innovative production techniques. Such materials will be validated into cars’ interior parts (door handles and automotive seats) demonstrating advanced properties in terms of resistance to fire, mechanical strength and flexibility as well as improved recyclability of the end-of-life products. The project will also aim at demonstrating an innovative process for the production of up to 80% biobased NIPUs, with moisture-repellant properties. The involvement of external industrial players thorough targeted dissemination events will pave the ground to the widening of the market applications of the developed biomaterials: regenerated fibres from paper-grade wood pulp into textile production and biobased TPUs in nature based solutions within the construction sector.

Biorefinery industries are in a unique position to lead the way in turning CO2 emissions into added-value chemicals due to their intrinsic keenness towards innovation and their potential to transform their biogenic CO2 waste streams into bio-based chemicals that can be integrated within their own processes in a circular way. CO2SMOS aims to develop a platform of technologies to transform CO2 emissions produced by bio-based industries into a set a of high added-value chemicals with direct use as intermediates for bio-based products. The result is a toolbox combining intensified chemical conversions (electrocatalytic and membrane reactors) and innovative biotechnological solutions based on gas/liquid combined fermentation processes and organic/green-catalysts reaction processes, which allow versatile production, depending on the available resources and the targeted value chains, of seven different bio-based chemicals. These molecules will be validated as renewable CO2-based commodities for the formulation of high-performance biopolymers and renewable chemicals. The five breakthrough technologies involved in CO2SMOS will ensure low energy use (< 50 kWh/kg of CO2-based chemical), low production cost (< 1.75 €/kg), high product yield (up to 68% the ideal yield) and an outstanding GHG-abatement potential (avoiding of up to 10 additional kg of CO2 per each kg used as feedstock), which will contribute to the sustainability and cost competitiveness of the integrated conversion processes. Integration of CO2SMOS concept in existing and emerging biorefineries (supported by Scale Up and Replication plans) will contribute to expand the business portfolio and strengthen the economic base of the sector. A campaign to assess social acceptance of CO2SMOS solutions and to promote awareness of their environmental, social and economic benefits is also foreseen. The consortium counts on academic, RTO and industrial partners with two major actors in the biorefinery sector.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) market has grown with trends higher than 20% every year in the last 10 years. Their fast uptake is due to different innovative factors such as no shape limits in manufacturing process, full customisation on the single artefact, localised production and no waste material. In particular the ability to print any shape allows to design the products not following the constricting conventional manufacturing processes but just focalising on their function. This “Design for Function” feature is one of the main drivers for AM uptake on a wider scale production and the limited number of “functional” materials that can be printed or the limit in controlling gradient and surface properties are showing to be an important barrier. This is particularly true in manufacturing of tissue engineering (TE) scaffolds where the technology has a promising growth over the last decade. Scaffolds production for tissue regeneration is one of the main fields where the “Design for Function” feature of AM make the difference relative to the other production techniques if in the production process all the needed “Functions” can be introduced: mechanics, geometry (porosity and shape), biomaterial, bio-active molecules and surface chemical groups. The FAST project aims to integrate all these “Functions” in the single AM process. This integration will be obtained by the hybridisation of the 3D polymer printing with melt compounding of nanocomposites with bio-functionalised fillers directly in the printing head and atmospheric plasma technologies during the printing process itself. Final objective of the project is to realize a demonstrator of the proposed hybrid AM technology in order to achieve a small pilot production of scaffolds for bone regeneration with the novel smart features to be tested in some in-vivo trials.