ALGAESOL will develop and evaluate several solutions for the sustainable conversion of sunlight into fuels. The project will advance current state-of-the-art by creating and consolidating new value chains for shipping and aviation fuels based on micro-algae and direct solar renewable fuel technologies. ALGAESOL will reduce production costs by 25%and improve efficiency of converting solar energy, carbon dioxide (CO2) and organic wastes into renewable methanol (CH3OH), methane (CH4) and biooils, forming the basis for aviation and shipping fuels. Various systems (biologic, photoelectrochemical, electrochemical and bioelectrochemical) will be evaluated and smart reactor design will be combined with process improvements. Targeted are microbial contamination control strategies, the increase solar to chemical energy conversion efficiencies, and improved algal strains to generate lipid superproducers will facilitate extraction, followed by innovative purification and hydro-processing technology to deliver the fuels. Enhanced sustainability of the developed fuels, is also based on a circular bio economy approach by using waste streams and about 80% of residual biomass generate in the ALGAESOL value chain will be re-circulated as input for the conversion process. The economic and environmental, as well as social sustainability will guide the design and scale-up at process level and for the whole value chain in alignment with the European Green Deal priorities. Used will be computational modelling and process simulations, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), Life Cycle Costs (LCC), and Social Life Cycle Analysis (S-LCA) as well as practical engineering approaches. Through this approach is the overall reduction of the environmental impact when producing biofuels expected to be about 20% relative to today's processes. The project will reinforce the European scientific basis, technology leadership and competitiveness through international collaborations.

NEFERTITI will develop an innovative highly efficient photocatalytic system enabling a simultaneous conversion of CO2 and H2O into solar fuels (ethanol and alcohols with longer chain such as (iso)propanol) and thus provide a breakthrough alternative to transform CO2 into valuable products for energy and transport. NEFERTITI aims to integrate novel heterogeneous catalysts (Covalent organic frameworks and metal oxides combined with metallic nanoparticles) and luminescent solar concentrators into two Photocatalytic flow reactors sourced by sunlight energy. The reaction mechanisms for the photocatalytic CO2/H2O conversion and C-C bond formation will be defined and optimised. As this has never been done before, NEFERTITI will develop a completely new way of producing such compounds in a continuous manner having a significant impact on the scientific understating of this technology. Modelling of C-C bond formation from activated intermediates will then determinate the reaction pathways, barriers and selectivity for C-C, C-O and C-H bonds. By increasing the sunlight conversion efficiency and improving light-harvesting and charge separation, NEFERTITI will overcome the remaining technological challenges, improve the competitiveness of the photocatalytic technologies and enable a carbon-neutral production of solar fuels in a single-step process as an alternative to traditional multi-step processes. Novel photocatalytic materials, optical and chemical light-harvesting components and flow reactors will be designed, developed and integrated in a system reaching a TRL4 at the end of the project. Economic and sustainability assessment throughout the entire life cycle will consider socio-economic and environmental impacts, as well as workers’ health & safety to maximize productivity and resource efficiency and minimize the risks. The consortium is composed of an experienced multidisciplinary team from EU, China and USA, supported by an international Advisory Board.

The CO2Fokus project aims to realise the full potential of a number of concrete strategies to exploit the direct use of CO2 for the production of dimethyl ether (DME) by CO2 hydrogenation. With CO2 utilisation at its heart, CO2Fokus will seek to exploit the inherent advantages of both chemical and electrochemical systems to establish robust, industrially optimal proofs-of-concept, reaching TRL 6 by the end of the project. The project will explore energy-efficient processes for two separate, potentially integrated systems, namely a 3D printed multichannel reactor and a solid oxide fuel cell (for co-electrolysis and electrolysis/reverse operation). Both systems will be evaluated for operational flexibility in an industrial environment with a CO2 emission point source. H2, as a renewable energy source, will be supplied via the solid oxide cell operating in electrolysis mode, The central focus will be on producing tangible improvements to the industrial processes in terms of energy efficiency and cost saving, by optimising the most promising conventional catalyst systems as well as innovative carbon-based ones. To this end, the catalyst will be printed and assembled as multi-channel arrays into modular, mobile prototype demonstration units. To enhance the effectiveness of the partners’ innovation efforts and reach ambitious commercial goals, CO2Fokus draws on expertise from partners across the industrial value chain, from industrial CO2 emitters, experts in catalyst manufacturing, petrochemical process engineering, chemistry and fuel cell specialists, offering a wealth of inter-disciplinary and market-oriented experience.

COUPLED is a holistic interdisciplinary project designed to demonstrate renewable fuel production seamlessly integrating three advanced technologies. The project encompasses optimal integration the demonstration in industrial settings (TRL7), detailed considerations of safety, environmental, societal, policy and business aspects for widespread adoption in the European energy sector. At its core, COUPLED combines: a) Chemical Looping Syngas generation thermally sustained, operated at high pressure, b) In-situ CO2 recovery using new class of membranes and c) Fischer Tropsch synthesis process, leveraging a structured reactor with a novel Fe-based catalyst optimized for CO2-rich feedstock. In combination, the proposed technologies will target an overall CO2-to-fuel conversion up 92% and the reduction of the production costs by 20% with respect to existing solutions for different industrial scenarios. Hence, the deployment of the technology at scale will support refineries, biogas and waste-to-energy processes in producing sustainable aviation fuels and renewable methanol production, and supply high-value fuel for steel manufacturing, contributing to the decarbonization of heavy industry. COUPLED includes research and technology organizations, relevant end users, catalyst suppliers technology specialists, fuel technology licensors and consultancy company ensuring expertise across the entire value chain. To maximize the industrial impact, the project will assess techno-economic, environmental a social acceptance, will develop an exploitation plan aiming to generate a sound business close to 60 b€ in revenues by 2050 given the market potential. The technology has the potential to use 6 mtpa of CO2 conversion into fuels from project partners by 2050, approximately 3% of the EU target in industrial CCU and carbon management by 2050.

Circular TwAIn will lower the barriers for all the stakeholders in manufacturing and process industry circular value chains to adopt and fully leverage of trusted AI technologies, in ways that will enable end-to-end sustainability, i.e. from eco-friendly product design to the maximum exploitation of production waste across the circular chain. To this end, the project will research, develop, validate and exploit a novel AI platform for circular manufacturing value chains, which will support the development of interoperable circular twins for end-to-end sustainability. Circular TwAIn will unlock the innovation potential of a collaborative AI-based intelligence in production based on the use of cognitive digital twins. Moreover, based on the use of trustworthy AI techniques, Circular TwAIn will enable human centric sustainable manufacturing, fostering the transition towards Industry 5.0. Furthermore, Circular TwAIn will enable the integration and combination of different data from various sources over entire product life cycle considering sustainability aspects. The goal is to create and deliver innovative services among the members of the data ecosystem; these services will be embedded in AI-based Digital Twins, supporting an unambiguous communication when realizing complex services for sustainable manufacturing. The ambition of Circular TwAIn is to unleash the sustainability potential of AI technologies in circular manufacturing chains through: (i) Introducing AI optimizations in stages where AI is still not used (e.g., AI-based product design); (ii) Using AI for multi-stage and multi-objective circular optimizations that could improve sustainability performance. In this direction, the project will leverage information from a circular manufacturing dataspace that will provide access to the datasets needed for multi-stage and multi-objective optimizations.