This joint laboratory project "MIXI-LAB" refers to VMI company (Vendée Mécanique Industrie) and ONIRIS-UMR CNRS 6144 GEPEA. It aims at developing innovative solutions for dispersion / mixing. VMI is a major player in the mixing industry while UMR GEPEA (A + AERES / 2011) has a process engineering experience. Mixing and structuring based on liquid and solid ingredients systems (powders), poses particular problems found in food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, etc. A mixer consists of a container (reactor) and one or more tools that will set motion and contact between solid, liquid &gas. The design of the reactor & tool is often based on experience combined with an intuitive approach. Different physicochemical constraints are involved such as shear, elongation, the solid-solid and solid-liquid affinities, solubilization of solids, chemical reactions .... The energy and viscous dissipation results from tool-reactor-products interactions. In this traditional industry, the use of sensors is minimal and is often limited to global data (energy), offline sensors, or based on at the discretion of the operator. MIXI-LAB aims at: 1) Establishment of a scientific approach based on physical models for optimizing and scaling up continuous and batch mixers. This development will be supported by a database (combining models and data from tests) that will be implemented and enriched by the experimental data collected on test protocols with models and real products. The final goal is to store the knowledge and develop extrapolation tools to strengthen VMI’s development and expertise. 2) Development of a sensor offer. The objective is to improve supervision, optimize the energy provided in function accurate data determining the degree of completion of a dispersion-mixture operation. Various technologies and approach should allow on-line control (continuous systems) and batch operation ("software-sensor" approach). 3) The development of a background study on the interaction between reactor headspace & material undergoing mixing. This approach will focus i) on the consumption of certain gases (oxygen, other) in order to control the gas intake during mixing, ii) the development of breakthrough technologies to the introduction of minor ingredients (improvers, fillers, plasticizers ...) and iii) on innovative ways of incorporating liquid phases. The incorporation strategy for minor ingredients is to be solved especially for continuous mixers. 4) Optimization and extrapolation of the reactor / tool with two targets; for batch systems by adopting multi tool techniques to better control the shear and for continuous mixer to better understand the involved phenomena and develop a range of continuous mixer with extrusion-expansion capabilities. In the long term, it is envisaged to develop continuous mixer adapted to food and non food application to be implemented in co-extrusion systems for mastering 2D-3D matrices and the 3D printer technology type. Two application areas are targeted: bakery (M1 to M36) & non-food (cosmetics, biotech…) after the first 36 months. The major challenge for VMI is to switch to a scientific approach for equipment design, to successfully bridge the evolution towards continuous systems and to develop a sensor-based process supervision.

"European agriculture faces many challenges, including producing food and non-food products in sufficient quantity and quality and creating added value for farmers and actors in the food chain, while reducing agriculture's impact on the environment. Agroecology, defined as ""the study of the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment within agricultural systems"", is considered a highly relevant option for reorienting European agriculture to meet these major challenges.However, the education provided in European universities is not yet fully adapted to train current and future agricultural professionals in agroecology. In particular, multidisciplinary approaches are not well developed in existing curricula. Moreover, current teaching methods often lack the interactive and digital dimensions that are promising learning methods. Innovative tools are therefore urgently needed to help university teachers provide high quality and attractive multidisciplinary training on agroecology to agricultural students and professionals.The SEGAE project therefore aims to facilitate a multidisciplinary and systemic understanding of agroecology for secondary and higher education students and agricultural professionals through the development of a digital training tool. To achieve this objective, we have brought together a consortium of six European universities: University of Liège (BE), Agrocampus Ouest (FR), Groupe ESA (FR), Oniris (FR), Agricultural University of Krakow (PL) and University of Bologna (IT).This tool takes the form of a serious game, i.e. a computer simulation game that helps players to understand in concrete terms how to implement agroecology on a farm. In concrete terms, the player manages a virtual farm combining crops and dairy cattle breeding, where she/he can implement and evaluate the impacts of agricultural practices on indicators related to the environmental, economic and social sustainability of her/his farm. She/He can make her/his choices on aspects as varied as the choice of cattle breed, animal feed ration, choice of crops, tillage method, etc. And see directly and over time the impact of her/his choices on the various indicators. Four European farm types are proposed by default: French, Italian, Belgian and Polish.The game is aimed at teachers at universities and agricultural schools, as well as agricultural advisers in continuing education. Several pedagogical objectives can be achieved with the game: understanding the effects of different agroecological practices, global analysis of the farm, management of agroecological transitions. In addition, a scenario editor allows teachers to develop their own tailor-made pedagogical scenarios, thus meeting different learning objectives and reaching different audiences. The game is accompanied by video tutorials and a pedagogical platform that includes a teaching guide for teachers, turnkey exercise sheets, as well as lessons on the different dimensions of agroecology addressed in the game. The game, the tutorial and the teaching tools are freely available in 6 languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish).In the framework of the project, more than 800 students have used the game. A training session involving 51 students demonstrated the educational interest of the game and resulted in a scientific publication (Jouan et al., 2020). Nearly 700 teachers, researchers and higher and technical education staff also received information or training on the game. Finally, more than 4,800 people have used the game since it went online.We hope that this serious game will help train high school and university students as well as agricultural professionals to contribute to the agroecological transition of European agriculture."