LANDFEED will focus on creating value from under-utilised waste from the agro-food industry, forestry, urban and natural waste, implementing circular and local solutions that allow waste to be valorised by placing it in a circular framework, and producing innovative biofertilisers to improve Europe's self-sufficiency. In addition to optimising and implementing innovative nutrient recovery technologies, work will be carried out on a new generation of coatings for these bio-based fertilisers, capable of improving their efficiency through controlled nutrient release mechanisms. In this way LANDFEED will contribute to a better management of the fertiliser provided, we will contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions and a reduced impact on the environment's water resources. LANDFEED will ensure that the solutions and results of the project are locally driven through the different use cases. The use cases will consider all links in the value chain that will participate as lighthouses, serving as demonstrators and disseminators of the technologies, results and applications developed during the project. These use cases will also contribute to the objectives of the Soil Strategy by enabling the restoration of soil health through the enhancement of its specific and functional biodiversity. At the global level, the business model will be defined in its entirety, with the aim of maximising the replicability of these Use Cases and facilitating their implementation in other European areas and regions.

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.

Retinopathies constitute an extreme societal and socioeconomic burden that is expected to increase with an aging population and the increased prevalence of diabetes. These diseases, including age-related macular degeneration and proliferative diabetic retinopathy share neovascularization as a common etiology involving the pathological growth of retinal capillaries leading to blindness if left untreated. Current treatment modalities involve specialized injections into the eye that require not only outpatient visits to specialized treatment centers but are also associated with significant adverse effects. Orally bioavailable medications could revolutionize the treatment of retinopathies, by reducing adverse effects, sustaining vision, lowering the direct and indirect financial burden associated with these diseases, and increasing access to healthcare. Inspired by this idea, we have developed an approach that can be exploited to target essentially any therapeutic molecule to the eye. Our novel strategy of drug targeting will not only enrich the modified molecules in retinal tissue but will also reduce the therapeutic oral dose compared to existing anti-angiogenic therapy in cancer thereby increasing the safety of the treatment. This is achieved by absorbing a minute amount of the chemically and biologically stable molecules resulting in an extremely low plasma concentration and relying on a biological mechanism in the eye to activate the molecules to tether them to retinal target receptors and thereby extracting them from the blood. In the present application, we propose to demonstrate proof-of-concept of this strategy by modifying inhibitors of the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR). VEGFR is an endothelial receptor tyrosine kinase that is a key mediator of angiogenesis and an established drug target for the treatment of retinopathies. Our approach will elicit a paradigm shift in how we design future drug delivery strategies to the retina.

The project consortium of DeepBEAT aims to develop ground-breaking technologies to use geochemistry for the detection of deep-seated land deposits. Transforming Europe's exploration sector by integrating cutting-edge technologies and sustainable practices will push Europe towards a climate-neutral and socially responsible economy. The exploration of deep land deposits should employ environmentally friendly, socially acceptable, and ultra-low impact methodologies to ensure the citizens that exploration activities can be conducted responsibly. Acceptance to exploration and mining will be a cornerstone towards cultivating a more resilient and inclusive European society. DeepBEAT final outcome will be a workflow which addresses these aspects by two means: I) DeepBEAT plans to engage with the local communities at the test sites to learn about concerns, hesitancy and what is the emotional core of these. Experiences from these events will be included in exploration workflow as an integral part, following the principles of free, prior, informed consent, which requires to interact with communities at a very early stage. II) DeepBEAT proposes ten novel technological developments, all designed to minimize impact on environment and maximise sustainability. These research and innovation developements have the potential to push the limits of surface geochemical exploration to an other level. They comprise a) new insights to ultra-high resolution analytical chemistry, b) increasing sampling strategy efficiency, c) introducing ground-breaking new concepts of dealing with elemental measurement data, d) reducing exploration costs by sample selection, e) testing novel phyto-geochemical media, and f) introducing UAV assisted biogeochemical sampling. Detailed understanding of the deposits complement the workflow to allow the understanding of the mineralizations as part of mineral systems and AI-assisted 3D mineral prospectivity modelling.

SUSHEAT develops and validates, up to TRL 5, 3 novel enabling technologies: high-temperature heat pump (HT-HP), Phase Change Material (PCM) bio-inspired Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system, and Control & Integration Twin (CIT) system; for heat upgrade in top-level labs. It will attain an efficient heat upgrade up to 150-250 °C thanks to the use the innovative Stirling-based HT-HP, working with hellium and enlarging the industrial exploitability of heat upgrade systems, reaching a COP up to 2.8 for temperature ratios of 1.2. The integration of innovative TES will ensure a reliable, flexible, and customizable heat delivery with full decoupling from any waste heat recovery and renewables availability. Moreover, its CIT will provide user-friendly tools and a digital twin for the control system and advising industrial stakeholders, based on smart decision-making algorithms. SUSHEAT will bring an effective self-assessment of the most suited heat upgrade system integration including not only its key enabling components but, beyond, also leveraging on off-the-self RES-based units, particularly solar thermal collectors even enlarging the feasibility of Concentrating Solar Power systems that can extend its operation working at low temperature. Two case-studies are replicated for validation at TRL5, and 4 additional cases are analysed in-depth to cover other sectors as Pulp & Paper, Beverages, Petrochemical, Textile & leather and basic metals. By developing industry-focused self-assessment tools, and directly engaging different industrial stakeholders, SUSHEAT will contribute to identify the target industrial processes and sites which would benefit from the concept, rising awareness of various heat upgrade benefits within the industry and providing solutions to maximize the industrial efficiency while contributing to the sector’s decarbonization, reducing the GHG emissions up to 145 gCO2/kWh (excluding solar contribution and based on EU 2020 intensity and the use NG).