This project aims to provide for real-world implementations of Water Framework Directive (and other water related legislation), as well as the Circular Economy and EU Green Deal packages by showcasing and validating innovative next generation water resource solutions at pre-commercial demonstration scale. These solutions combine WATER management services with the recovery of value added renewable resources extracted/MINED from alternative water resources ("WATER-MINING"). The project will integrate selected innovative technologies that have reached proof of concept levels under previous EU projects. The value-added end-products (water, platform chemicals, energy, nutrients, minerals) are expected to provide regional resource supplies to fuel economic developments within a growing demand for resource security. Different layouts for urban wastewater treatment and seawater desalination are proposed, to demonstrate the wider practical potential to replicate the philosophy of approach in widening circles of water and resource management schemes. Innovative service-based business models (such as chemical leasing) will be introduced to stimulate progressive forms of collaboration between public and private actors and access to private investments, as well as policy measures to make the proposed water solutions relevant and accessible for rolling out commercial projects in the future. The goal is to enable costs for the recovery of the resources to become distributed across the whole value chain in a fair way, promoting business incentives for investments from both suppliers and end-users along the value chain. The demonstration case studies are to be first implemented in five EU countries (NL, ES, CY, PT, IT) where prior successful technical and social steps have already been accomplished. The broader project consortium representation will be an enabler to transferring trans-disciplinary project know-how to the partner countries while motivating and inspiring relevant innovations throughout Europe.

IntelWATT aims to develop innovative, cost efficient, smart separation technologies applied in energy and water intensive industries. The goal of the project is to demonstrate 3 TRL7 case studies that will achieve water preservation along with energy production and material recovery. The proposed solutions will also target at zero liquid discharge while implementing maximum water reuse. Tailor made sensors and automated decision making mechanisms will optimize the process conditions in real time. The case studies will be implemented in crucial EU and global industrial applications such as electricity production, mining and metal plating. -Case study 1:Demonstration prototype for CTBD treatment. The development of efficient, cost effective, smart solutions for water management in a thermoelectric power plant, aiming at minimization of the cooling tower blow down (>99% recovery) trough developing a pilot unit of 100 m3/day treatment capacity installed in the premise of PPC’s unit V (natural gas combined circle facility, Megalopolis, Greece) based on a closed loop, near zero liquid discharge approach. -Case study 2: Demonstration of a symbiotic concept between industries: sustainable production of energy and water. In this context, an integrated pilot unit (100 m3/day) comprised by Reverse Electrodialysis (RED) and solar powered membrane distillation (MD) systems. -Case study 3: The application of a novel, hybrid high recovery RO (HRRO) / Ion exchange (IX) resin prototype will demonstrate the recovery of valuable electrolytes and fresh water preservation in a plastic electroplating facility. The process is aiming towards recovering up to 95 % of Chromium and Copper and 50% of Nickel, while preserving 65% of fresh water. Implement smart sensor technology for online monitoring, real time process adaptation and deep learning, with customizable intelligent industrial process software module based on an agnostic protocol connectivity cloud infrastructure.

Competitive conflicts for land use between the energy and food sectors have appeared, which could be mitigated by the vertical integration of RES in farms through new circular business models. By this approach, farms will become climate neutral, optimising their production and reducing their impact on natural resources and biodiversity, on top of providing energy services to communities and diversifying their economic income. However, there is a need to identify, understand and overcome major existing barriers perceived by agricultural communities. Moreover, current initiatives do not to effectively consider and address the complex interactions and factors from the farming and RES context, thus missing to support decision making based on accurate projections, estimations and forecasts. HarvRESt will work on these needs by improving the existing knowledge and its fragmented status, which will be feed to an Agricultural Virtual Power Plant able to run different scenarios and farm configurations to determine the best operation procedures for a given RES solution. This data will be then provided to a decision support system able to weight trade-offs and key indicators to provide ad-hoc recommendations to farmers and policy makers, thus enabling the consecution of improved production rates on renewable energy, food & feed within agro communities. For the successful execution of HarvRESt and implementation of recommendations, a multi-actor approach fostering co-creation sessions together with the provision of training materials for farmers empowerment will be implemented. The full approach of HarvRESt will be supported and executed at 4 use cases representing different topologies of farms, a diversity of stakeholders and organizational structures, distinct geographical conditions and a wide variety of RES technologies. Together with HarvRESt community and mapped initiatives, the project will act as a hub for knowledge and best-practices on RES integration at farm level.

Globally, the Construction industry is responsible for over 30% of the extraction of natural resources, 25% of solid waste generated and 40% of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions. Around a third of these emissions come from embodied carbon in construction. Cement and Steel are responsible for most of the embodied GHGs, representing >80% of the total. With recycling of cement and steel having a limited potential for further improving material efficiency, the focus is on replacing them with low-carbon alternatives and/or embedding them in reusable construction components. RECONSTRUCT will (i) develop low-carbon alternatives to Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), to be used in both renovations and new buildings, and incorporate Construction & Demolition Waste (CDW) and other waste as much as possible, (ii) manufacture construction components that use such materials and are designed for modularity and dismantling so they can either be reused or easily disassembled and recycled, (iii) embed deconstruction in building design and construct circular low-carbon buildings that produce near-zero CDW across their lifecycle. These objectives will become possible through (i) the digitization of construction materials, products and buildings, (ii) the extensive use of digital tools to support the design, construction and deconstruction phases of the circular building and (iii) the regionalization of the construction value chain through the creation of regional ecosystems of stakeholders covering all the aspects of circular construction. The RECONSTRUCT concept will be demonstrated by setting up to Territorial Circular Clusters, in Brussels and Barcelona, and using RECONSTRUCT's materials, components and innovative tools to design and construct two real-scale demonstrator buildings. By doing so, RECONSTRUCT aims to demonstrate its high impact potential (including a GHG reduction potential of 137,12 Mt CO2 per year, avoidance of 85 million tonnes of CDW per year and substitution of 197 Mt of OPC concrete per year) and its economic feasibility.

ASTERISK proposes integrating seawater treatment and green hydrogen production using a Platinum Group Metal (PGM)-free anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolyser. The consortium will work on developing AEM stack components compatible and stable under saline conditions, namely water oxidation and water reduction electrocatalysts, anion exchange ionomers and membranes, porous transport layers and electrical contacts. ASTERISK will incorporate a minimal seawater treatment step before the stack to remove biological, organic and suspended solids content with minimal energy requirements and operating costs, leaving the ions naturally present in seawater to enter the stack. The project will meet the challenging KPIs set by this call and significantly improve upon the degradation rate of <5% over 500h operation leveraging the current experience on materials and membranes design already developed in ongoing projects involving several ASTERISK partners. A final ASTERISK demo will achieve up to 100 gH2/h production on a 5 kWe stack operating for 2000h, to achieve the goal of reaching TRL 4 at project end. The technical work will be complemented with an eco-design process supported by an environmental and socio-economic analysis to guide the development of a low impact and circular designed AEM device maximising socio-economic benefits. A techno-economic and exploitation plan to move from laboratory scale single-cell to a multi-stack electrolyser will be studied to ensure a fast-track to commercialisation. If successful, ASTERISK will advance cost-effective and sustainable green hydrogen production and contribute to the European Union's long-term carbon neutrality and renewable energy leadership goals.