The NEO-CYCLE project aims to demonstrate at TRL6 the sustainable upcycling of spent NdFeB magnets comings from hard disks drives (HDDs), reaching high quality end products for 4 case studies: pharmaceutical, ammonia, fertilizers, and polymers industries; and will include necessary paths to reach the market uptake. To reach this aim, NEO-CYCLE involves all the relevant actors in the value chain, from public authorities to WEEE recycler companies, technology developers, associations, NGOs, SMEs and commercial companies in the targeted sectors. A summary of the main activities in provide below: 1) Demonstration of a Solid-State Chlorination, Electrochemical and Purification processes at TRL6 to separate Nd, Fe and B reaching market needed purities. 2) Demonstration of upcycling approaches for Nd, Fe, and B at TRL6 by developing industrial catalysts for the four case studies. 3) Validation of the quality and performance of final products by leading commercial companies 4) Including processes and products digitalisation: mathematical modelling and optimisation, monitoring and digital twins of plants, and digital product passports. 5) Sustainability assessments (LCA, LCC, s-LCA, circularity, risk and energy efficiency, green logistics and TEA) to demonstrate the techno-economic and social viability of solutions, including a guide to consider the gender dimension in the different project stages. 6) Paving the way to the market uptake by a) assessments of current legislations and future development, b) performing a standardisation roadmap, c) plan and develop communication, dissemination and exploitation activities including clustering with other projects and at least 13 stakeholder engagement events, d) creating new business models for at least 11 Key Expected Results, and e) development of 13 training courses targeting soft and technical skills to promote inclusion and new jobs in the value chains.

The rising demand and limited supply of critical raw materials (CRMs) impair the ability to rapidly adopt technological change toward green and sustainable technologies, which directly affect the resilience of EU industries seeking to achieve Green Deal objectives for an equitable, zero-emission, and digitalized Europe. In response to these challenges, the European Commission aims to minimize the loss of secondary raw materials (SRM) and optimize their reuse across value chains. CE-RISE will develop and pilot an integrated framework and an ensuing resource information system to identify optimal solutions for the effective reuse, recovery, and/or recycling of materials by (a) defining a set of criteria (RE criteria) to evaluate the extent to which products and embedded components can be reused, repaired, refurbished and/or recycled; (b) incorporating information on RE criteria and material composition of products into the Digital product passport (DPP) to enable traceability of materials in the supply chain; (c) integrating DPP with information on the environmental footprint of products (PEF), socio-economic and environmental (SEE) impacts of RE processes; (d) enabling confidential and anonymized information sharing among actors throughout value chains; (e) providing open-access software application to disseminate information on the assessment of RE criteria, PEF and SEE impacts of products to all stakeholders including consumers and policymakers. The results will be piloted on four case studies. CE-RISE will contribute to bridging the digital divide in society by supplying affordable second-hand ICT devices, and supporting access to digital education and job opportunities. Ultimately, CE-RISE will foster a dynamic ecosystem geared toward prolonging the use of materials in the economy and stimulating circular business models to reduce waste generation while optimizing the reuse of SRMs.

CRUSADE upscales novel technologies to TRL7 integrated in a universal hydrometallurgical method to recycle up to 500 tn/year of spent automotive components (autocatalysts, fuel cells, batteries and printed circuit boards) from end-of-life vehicles and recover ca 40 tn/year of critical raw materials (Cu, C, Co, Mn, Ni, Pt, Pd, Rh, Li, Ru) at commercial specifications. The project leverages predeveloped technologies to establish a market ready pilot unit utilising novel concepts for material tracing using blockchain (AKO, SAISLAB, ENTE) and pan European collection network establishment from the pioneers of the automotive components manufacturers (SUN, ADV, CRF, MONO, ACU) which guarantee the long term sustainable operation of the unit. The material processing covers the whole chain from pre-treatment using validated technologies from the experts on the CRMs recovery (MONO, TUBAF, KUL) and upstream processing using a microwave assisted leaching methodology enabling a 15-80% lower CO2 emission process (depending on the feed), compared to commercial processing. High specification market ready materials are prepared as outputs of the project undergoing a downstream purification and recovery process using solvent extraction and electrowinning, guided by industrial standards for end-use applications, while validated and benchmarked during the course of the project in new automotive products. The processing is automated aiming to a 15% time reduction compared to current processes with the use of an industrial robot and artificial technology guiding the sorting and the hydrometallurgical treatment (Industry 4.0 concept). The materials are commercialised at 15% lower price compared to market standards due to the automated innovative cost efficient processing, CAPEX/OPEX reaching max 70% of product cost (average 30% gross profit margin depending on feed).

The technological advances that have been achieved over the past decades have led to a tremendous increase of both the types and the total amount of electrical and electronic equipment that is manufactured. Despite the importance of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) management, the issue of the WEEE recycling has not received that increased industrial attention. HR-Recycler will target the development of a ‘hybrid human-robot recycling plant for electrical and electronic equipment’ operating in an indoor environment. The fundamental aim of the system (and its great innovation potential) will be to replace multiple currently manual, expensive, hazardous and time-consuming tasks of WEEE materials pre-processing with correspondingly automatic robotic-based procedures (categorization of electric/electronic devices, disassembling them, sorting of device components), before the materials are eventually provided as input to a fine shredding machine and conventional material separation steps are applied (using air/water flows, oscillating movements, magnets, etc.). More specifically, the overall goal of HR-Recycler is to create a hybrid collaboration environment, where humans and robots will harmoniously share and undertake at the same time different processing and manipulation tasks, targeting the industrial application case of WEEE recycling. The primary output of the envisaged system will be to extract sorted electric/electronic device components [e.g. Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), Cu coils, capacitors, etc.] and concentrated fractions (e.g. copper, aluminium, plastics, etc.) of increased economic and environmental value; hence, contributing to the fundamental goal of the ‘European circular economy’ project and boosting economic activity in secondary markets. Additionally, mixed fractions (i.e. fractions with low concentration in valuable materials) will be collected, in order to be sent to other facilities for further dedicated recycling process.