The HERMES project advances hydrogen separation and purification technologies through the development, scaling-up, and industrial demonstration at TRL7 of innovative membrane systems, while conducting comprehensive evaluations for safety, environmental impact, social acceptance, and cost reduction in industrial settings. The project aims at developing and scaling up two membrane technologies (Pd-based and Carbon based membranes), to design and build 2 prototypes at TRL7, and to prove the technologies at two industrial sites (in Italy and in Turkey), for separation of pure hydrogen for 5 different streams of industrial interest. The prototypes will allow the separation of hydrogen with energy consumptions well below 3.5 kWh/kg and costs below 1 euro/kg. The project will also evaluate the environmental impact of the processes with detailed LCA analysis. HERMES will also contribute to safety studies of the system and to the public awareness of the technologies. The project counts with 1 University, 2 research institutions and 4 large industries and SMEs.

As the built environment continues to face challenges such as climate change, energy consumption, and social inequality, there is a growing need for adopting sustainable building practices beyond energy considerations, encompassing environmental, social, and economic dimensions across the entire lifecycle of buildings. In view of these challenges, WILSON proposes a groundbreaking approach, leveraging semantic data repositories, cognitive digital twins, and decentralized data management to transform building and buildings’ portfolio management. The project aims to enhance sustainability by harnessing cutting-edge technologies and innovative management practices. To achieve it, WILSON main development is focused on a decentralized data mesh architecture that is agnostic to and interoperable with proprietary BMS and Digital Twin Systems. Key objectives include improving building operations, evaluating environmental impact, and enhancing building diagnosis and monitoring. Personalized Data Hubs (PDHs) will connect and integrate all WILSON solutions, adhering to International Data Space (IDS) principles. These solutions will be complemented by an Investment Tool to support decision-making on renovation and RES investments. To maximize its impact across the EU, WILSON will validate and demonstrate its solutions in four large-scale pilots across different European countries. The consortium comprises 16 partners (50% SMEs and industry) with diverse expertise, including research institutions, technological providers, an international Data Association, and finance SMEs. Overall, the project aims to upgrade 200,000 m2 of buildings, reducing maintenance costs by up to 35%. In the long-term, WILSON seeks to ensure Europe's global competitiveness, data sovereignty, and achievement of EU energy and environmental goals by 2050, resulting in a highly energy-efficient and decarbonized building stock.

The global EV market is largely reliant on battery electric vehicles (BEVs) that employ lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, mostly based on liquid electrolytes. Due to extensive research and development of Li-ion, we are gradually reaching the maximum chemical potential of today’s electrode materials regarding Nickel-rich cathodes. Yet Li-ion based battery systems, based on liquid electrolytes, still face significant limitations , due to their chemistries, such as high flammability , potential safety risks, burning, and explosions, electrochemical instabilities, and low ion selectivity. In this regard, promising solutions are emerging in the form of solid-state battery EV (SSBEV) technology. However, the inherent differences between SSBs and traditional Li-ion batteries such as fundamentally distinct operating temperatures, charging rates, form factor and cell safety characteristics introduce complexities in integrating them into existing BEV systems, necessitating a redesign of the several systems. To meet this need, ARISE will develop an advanced solid-state, fourth generation (Gen-4) Li-ion battery system that offers advanced high-performance features, based on a cell-to-chassis concept with expandable modules that is applicable to any next generation S SBEV. ARISE will cover 3 different development paths: 1) a new city car chassis design utilizing SSBs that is expandable when needed, 2) a novel battery and pack level Thermal Management System compatible with SSBs, 3) Smart Battery Management System that controls battery expansion, fast charging, and safety.

ENERMAN envisions the factory as a living organism that can manage its energy consumption in an autonomous way. It will create an Energy sustainability management framework collecting data from the factory and holistically process them to create dedicated energy sustainability metrics. These values will be used to predict energy trends using industrial processes, equipment and energy cost models. ENERMAN will deliver an autonomous, intelligent decision support engine that will evaluate the predicted trends and access if they match predefined energy consumption sustainability KPIs. If the KPIs are not met, ENERMAN will suggest and implement changes in energy affected production lines control processes: an energy aware flexible control loop on various factory processes will be deployed. The ENERMAN administrators will be able to use the above mechanisms in order to identify how future changes in the production lines can impact energy sustainability using the ENERMAN prediction engine (based on digital twins) to visualize possible sustainability results when in-factory changes are made in equipment, production line. The ENERMAN digital twin will predict the economic cost of the consumed energy based on the collected and predicted Energy Peak load tariff, Renewable Energy System self-production, the variations in demand response, possible virtual generation and prosumer aggregation. Finally, ENERMAN considers the operators actions within the production chain as part of a factory’s energy fingerprint since their activity within the factory impacts the various production lines. In ENERMAN, we include a training mechanism with suggested personnel good practices for energy sustainability improvement through the production lines. Current and predicted energy consumption/sustainability trends on specific assets of the factory are collected and visualized in a Virtual, eXtended reality model of the factory to enhance the situational energy awareness of the factory personnel.

The PROSPECTS 5.0 project aims to promote the adoption of Industry 5.0 principles, such as human centricity, sustainability, and resiliency, and facilitate the transition to Industry 5.0 for SMEs, start-ups, and scale-ups in various industries. The project intends to achieve its objectives by providing reports, guidelines, measurement tools, and a collaborative platform. To provide real-world examples, the project will analyse 14 use cases from different European Union countries and 6 different industries, covering various types of manufacturing, service providing, education, energy, aviation transport, and automotive. The selected industrial sectors are significant drivers for the adoption of Industry 5.0 and are crucial to the European economy. The use cases from these sectors will ensure a focused and effective transition to Industry 5.0 in Europe. PROSPECTS 5.0 results are expected to encourage collaboration between different entities, including companies, universities, research centres, and government agencies, to co-create new solutions and innovations, improve the skills and mindsets of individuals regarding Industry 5.0, and study pilot projects to test, validate, and measure the impact of Industry 5.0 on various operations, employees, customers, and the environment. Additionally, PROSPECTS 5.0 will raise awareness of Industry 5.0 through workshops, seminars/webinars, and collaborative online platforms and web applications showcasing successful case studies, best practices, challenges, and the latest trends and opportunities of this transition. PROSPECTS5.0 is relevant to the worker Horizon Europe Cluster 4 (Digital, Industry, Space) specifically to destination 6 “A human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies since the project results will lead to a more inclusive and sustainable EU Industry, and indirectly, the project findings will facilitate the understanding of the required skills needed to support the twin transition.