To reduce dependency on fossil fuels and to contribute to growing efforts to decarbonise the transport sector, biofuels provide a way to shift to low-carbon, non-petroleum fuels, with minimal changes to vehicle stock and distribution infrastructure. Whilst improving vehicle efficiency is a key cost-effective way of reducing CO2 emissions in the transport sector, biofuels will play a significant role in replacing liquid fossil fuels (particularly for those modes of transport which cannot be electrified). Production and use of biofuels can provide benefits such as increased energy security, reducing dependency on oil imports and reducing oil price volatility. Biofuels can also support economic development through creating new sources of income. BAC-TO-FUEL will respond to the global challenge of finding new sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels by developing, integrating and validating a disruptive prototype system at TRL5 which is able to transform CO2/H2 into added-value products in a sustainable and cost-effective way which: 1) mimics the photosynthetic process of plants using novel inorganic photocatalysts which are capable of producing hydrogen in a renewable way from photocatalytic splitting of water in the presence of sunlight 2) uses enhanced bacterial media to convert CO2 and the renewable hydrogen into biofuels (i.e. ethanol and butanol both important fuels for transport) using a novel electro-biocatalytic cell which can handle fluctuations in hydrogen and power supply lending itself to coupling to renewable energy technologies BAC-TO-FUEL is a multidisciplinary project which brings together leaders in the fields of materials chemistry, computational chemistry, chemical engineering, microbiology and bacterial engineering. BAC-TO-FUEL will validate a prototype system at TRL5 which is able to transform CO2/H2 into added-value products in a sustainable and cost-effective way specifically for the European transport sector.

Printed electronics (PE) is set to revolutionise the electronics industry over the next decade and can offer Europe the opportunity to regain lost market share. Printed electronics allows for the direct printing of a range of functional (conductive, resistive, capacitive and semi-conducting) nanomaterials formulations to enable a simpler, more cost-effective, high performance and high volume processing in comparison to traditional printed circuit board and semiconductor manufacturing techniques. It has been reported by Frost and Sullivan that the market for printed electronics will increase in revenues from $0.53Bn in 2010 to $5.04 Bn in 2016 at a compound annual growth rate of 32.5%. However, the migration towards low-cost, liquid-based, high resolution deposition and patterning using high throughput techniques, such as inkjet printing, requires that suitable functional nanomaterials formulations (e.g. inks) are available for end users in industrially relevant quantities. Presently, there are issues with industrial supply of nanomaterials which are low cost, high performance, environmentally friendly and tailored for high throughput systems. Therefore better collaboration is warranted between supply chain partners to ensure nanomaterial production and nanomaterial formulations are tailored for end use applications to meet this need. The INSPIRED project will address these fundamental issues within the printed electronics industry: Ensuring that suitable functional nanomaterials formulations (inks) are available for end users in industrial scale quantities. Production of these nanomaterial formulations on an industrial scale and then depositing them using cost-effective, high throughput printing technologies enables rapid production of printed electronic components, on a wide variety of substrates. Therefore, enabling new electronics applications, whilst overcoming the problems associated with traditional manufacturing.

In the development of new smart phones and tablets, there is a market requirement for alternatives to transparent conductive films (TCF) based on indium tin oxide (ITO). For ITO, the combination of conductive and optical properties is not good enough for many new products, and additionally ITO is brittle and can crack when repeatedly flexed in a touch panel. The leading contender for replacing ITO in TCF is silver nanowires and NANOGAP is the leading European manufacturer of nanowires. With a unique patented technology and resultant freedom to operate, NANOGAP has an excellent competive position in a growing market Based on NANOGAP’s technology and freedom to operate NANOGAP has commercial contracts in place with two global companies. In order grow the customer base and sustain this business opportunity NANOGAP must further enhance its technology, improving product performance to levels demanded by the industry (lower sheet resistance, higher light transmission, lower haze) while lowering costs. This project addresses these requirements by using new methods to both study and optimise the synthesis reaction and through developing new improved post-synthesis purification methods. Additionally, during the feasibility phase of this project, a market study will be performed on verifying new market opportunities for the new improved low cost products arising from this project. The key technical innovations will be around real time monitoring of very sensitive reaction conditions coupled to real time kinetic modelling. It is envisaged that this technique will form the basis of future in-line quality control procedures. Also, very importantly, new cross flow filtration techniques will be assessed for post-synthesis purification with particular interest in bespoke membrane development. The expected results from the technical innovation will be thinner longer nanowires, produced at higher purity and lower cost. This will translate to meeting the customer demands

One of the greatest challenges facing regulators in the ever changing landscape of novel nano-materials is how to design and implement a regulatory process which is robust enough to deal with a rapidly diversifying system of manufactured nanomaterials (MNM) over time. Not only does the complexity of the MNM present a problem for regulators, the validity of data decreases with time, so that the well-known principle of the half-life of facts (Samuel Arbesman, 2012) means that what is an accepted truth now is no longer valid in 20 or 30 years time. The challenge is to build a regulatory system which is flexible enough to be able to deal with new targets and requirements in the future, and this can be helped by the development and introduction of Safe by Design (SbD) principles. The credibility of such a regulatory system, underpinned by the implementation of SbD, is essential for industry, who while accepting the need for regulation demand it is done in a cost effective and rapid manner. The NANoREG II project, built around the challenge of coupling SbD to the regulatory process, will demonstrate and establish new principles and ideas based on data from value chain implementation studies to establish SbD as a fundamental pillar in the validation of a novel MNM. It is widely recognized by industries as well as by regulatory agencies that grouping strategies for NM are urgently needed. ECETOC has formed a task force on NM grouping and also within the OECD WPMN a group works on NM categorisation. However, so far no reliable and regulatory accepted grouping concepts could be established. Grouping concepts that will be developed by NanoREG II can be regarded as a major innovation therefore as guidance documents on NM grouping will not only support industries or regulatory agencies but would also strongly support commercial launch of new NM.