CARBAFIN will develop, based on an integrated biocatalytic production technology, a radically new value chain for the utilisation of surplus sucrose from sugar beet biomass in the EU. CARBAFIN will demonstrate bio-based co-production of a functional glucoside and fructose. The glucoside products of CARBAFIN (glucosylglycerol, cellodextrin) have large-scale uses in nutrition and feed, cosmetics and detergents. Fructose is exploited in the production of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a versatile chemical building block currently considered for making bio-based plastics. Leading platform technologies in biocatalytic cell factories and downstream processing, conjointly optimised in CARBAFIN for performance efficiency and cost-effectiveness under full integration of LCA and economic evaluation, are key to make industrial co-production of glycosides and HMF via fructose competitive in today's markets. In addition, CARBAFIN contributes to the establishment of new, fully renewables-based value chains across the European industries, linking the sugar industry sector to the cosmetics, chemicals, polymer and detergents sectors and strengthening the sugar industries' role in food and feed. It supports the efficient cascading use of sugar beet-derived sucrose in combination with biomass-derived base chemicals (e.g. glycerol, glucose). CARBAFIN's HMF production aims at replacing petroleum-based chemicals with bio-based building blocks. CARBAFIN will thus contribute to development of a chemical industry that is low-carbon, resource-efficient and sustainable. CARBAFIN will help Europe to maintain global leadership in industrial biotechnology and secure position as innovation leader in sugar-based products. CARBAFIN's innovations will involve broadly the engagement of societal actors with particular emphasis on consumer awareness and acceptance.

Five tonnes of waste per capita are generated every year in the EU. These annual 2.5 billion tonnes of waste contain large volumes of valuable materials for Europe’s industrial base. Proper collection of waste is a pre-condition for their optimal recovery. The current trend of increasing higher collection rates is promising, but progress is uneven between Members States and between regions. Good regional practices have the potential to serve as good practice examples for other regions. So far, however, results of existing studies and good practices have not been effective enough in supporting the implementation of better-performing systems elsewhere. The main objective of the COLLECTORS project is to overcome this situation and to support decision-makers in shifting to better-performing collection system. COLLECTORS will therefore: (1) Increase awareness of the collection potential by compiling, harmonizing and presenting information on systems for packaging and paper waste, WEEE and construction products via an online information platform. (2) Improve decision-making on waste collection by the assessment of twelve good practices on their performance on: (1) quality of collected waste; (2) economics; (3) environment; (4) societal acceptance. (3) Stimulate successful implementation by capacity-building and policy support methods that will increase the technical and operational expertise of decision-makers on waste collection. (4) Engage citizens, decision-makers and other stakeholders throughout the project for validation of project results and to ensure the usability of COLLECTORS-output. The COLLECTORS consortium is well-equipped to achieve these impacts as it is directly connected to more than 30 PROS and 2000+ authorities spread across the EU. In addition, the project is embedded in the full secondary raw material value chain ensuring alignment with waste management, recyclers and producers.

In the ARBAHEAT project an existing 731 MWe Ultra-SuperCritical coal-fired power plant will be transformed into a biomass-fired Combined Heat and Power plant by repowering with thermally-treated biomass produced on-site. This demonstration encompasses: (1) Transformation into CHP: This will be demonstrated by delivering a minor amount of heat to the on-site biomass treatment process, while envisaging large-volume heat delivery to nearby industry. This will provide renewable local heat, enhancing the overall efficiency of the plant from 46% electricity-only to 70-90% in CHP mode, (2) Biomass feedstock: An integrated thermal pre-treatment process will enable utilisation of diverse sustainable biomass feedstock. This will minimise investment and operating cost while broadening the possibilities in term of geographical feedstock sourcing and quality (3) Biomass pre-treatment: The thermal biomass upgrading process of ARBAFLAME will deliver biomass fuel with handling and milling characteristics approaching that of coal, allowing for retrofitting with minimal adaptations to the existing power plant. The technical capacity of the demonstration plant will allow for maximum flexibility in upscaling the technology for future replication, (4) Integration into power plant: The biomass pre-treatment and heat delivery system will be physically integrated within the existing power plant. Eliminating several cost and energy intensive steps (steam production, pelletizing) will be investigated, towards more cost-effective final design. This demonstration of an integrated very low-costs concept in large-scale energy production will pave the way to subsequent multiplication in commercial industrial projects, thus increasing the EU capacity for renewable power and heat generation. The renewable ARBAHEAT solution therefore has the potential to significantly contribute to the replacement of fossil-fuel in the heat and power sectors and increase the decarbonisation of the energy market.

SOURCE will develop, improve and demonstrate in an industrially relevant environment economically and environmentally viable routes for producing battery-grade synthetic graphite for high-performance anodes. SOURCE will first enable the production of carbon precursors from heterogeneous raw material sources, including alternative sustainable petroleum feedstocks, bio-waste and black mass from recycled batteries, to reduce the current dependence of synthetic graphite from petroleum-based coke. Sustainable technologies to transform these materials into carbon feedstock will be demonstrated at TRL6/7. Additionally, low-temperature graphitization techniques (30% potential reduction of the energy consumption and production cost. Innovative high-performance Carbon@graphite, Si@graphite, and graphene@graphite coatings and anode (capacity > 350 mAh/g) will be formulated, fabricated, tested and validated in 1Ah prototype pouch cells at TRL7. Recycling processes to recover graphite at low cost with >90% purity from LiB EoL batteries and >98% purity from anode production scrap will be demonstrated at TRL7. LCA and LCC analysis will be delivered to accurately assess the sustainability of SOURCE synthetic graphite and value chain defining the best routes to ensure economic and environmental sustainability. SOURCE brings together key EU industries with main businesses in graphite precursors and synthetic graphite production, and advanced anode formulation, supported by EU leading RTOs forming the complete value chain to produce high quality synthetic graphite in a sustainable and economic way. SOURCE achievements will increase EU competitiveness and independence from foreign graphite suppliers and anode manufacturers. SOURCE technologies and materials will be directly exploited by its top-level industrial partners with a direct market presence and already established commercial channels, ensuring SOURCE value chain sustainability.

The EU process industry needs to become less dependent of fossils as source of carbon, and – at the same time - to reduce the greenhouse effect by decarbonizing the economy. Carbon4PUR will tackle the two challenges at the same time by transforming the CO2/CO containing flue gas streams of the energy-intensive industry into higher value intermediates for market-oriented consumer products. The industrially driven, multidisciplinary consortium will develop and demonstrate a novel process based on direct chemical flue gas mixture conversion, avoiding expensive physical separation, thus substantially reducing the carbon footprint, and also contributing to high monetary savings. Both the consortium and the work are organized along the full value chain starting with the provision and conditioning of industrial emissions from a steel to a chemical company in line with the concept of industrial symbiosis, going through the transformation into chemical building blocks which will be further transformed into polymer intermediates and flow into desired sustainable polyurethane applications of rigid foams and coatings. LCA and technology evaluation will be done and replication strategies to transfer the technology to other applications will be elaborated. The distinctive feature of the developed process is avoiding resource-intense separation of the gas components before the synthesis, and developing a chemo-catalytic process to deal directly with the gas mixture instead. The challenge and innovation is coming up with an adjustable process in terms of on-purpose and demand tailor-made production of required products, taking into account all variables at the same time: the available flue gases characteristic from the steel plant, material and process parameters, and the market requirements for the end product, thus flexibly involving the whole value chain with best results and possibly lower the prices.