Europe needs URGENT solutions to decarbonize its heating sector. Geothermal energy can play a prominent role in this transition, providing heat in urban areas as an alternative to fossil fuels. However, its growth is hampered by the limited knowledge about the resources and risks in these challenging environments. Existing exploration methods are not suited for reservoir characterization in urban contexts. The URGENT project addresses this gap by providing sustainable and affordable solutions for urban seismic exploration of geothermal resources. Low-impact innovative technologies, consisting of an electric seismic source and novel MEMS based sensors integrated into autonomous nodes, will be designed, built, and tested on 3 sites: Balmatt (BE), Konin (PL), Batta (HU). They will enable high-quality data recording including low frequency signals resulting in high resolution imaging up to 4000m of depth. Ultimately, improved reservoir characterization will reduce the geological uncertainties and contribute to increase drilling success rate by 20%. Also, by optimizing survey design, including compressive sensing and simultaneous shooting, URGENT eventually aims at reducing exploration costs by 30%. For more efficient analysis of the acquired data, AI & ML methods will be developed and tested to assist and automate fault and fracture detection. Structural models including these features will be the basis for geomechanical modelling to assess fault reactivation and the corresponding seismic risk. In addition, ML techniques used in the O&G sector will be updated and combined with THM reservoir modelling to optimize the location and design of wells, maximizing heat extraction while minimizing seismic risk leading to increase plant lifetime up to 40 years and higher revenue. URGENT will contribute to accelerate the deployment of urban geothermal projects through exploration workflows suited for these environments, market uptake analysis and reinforced community acceptance.

There is a strong need to develop new biofuels production technologies that can be integrated into existing infrastructures, leading to biofuels that are cost competitive compared to existing ones and conventional fuels, with the same level of performance and a lower carbon footprint. The 4REFINERY project will develop and demonstrate up to pilot, routes to the production of next generation biofuels from more efficient primary liquefaction processes integrated with upgraded downstream (hydro)refining processes, to achieve overall increased carbon yields of >45%. The strong consortium covering the full process value chain, will identify risk-mitigation pathways for successful implementation into existing refineries, including delivering a comprehensive toolbox for interfacing with existing refinery models. 4REFINERY will focus on optimal pathways for the transformation of bio-liquids from fast pyrolysis and hydrothermal liquefaction into advanced biofuels, through intermediate process steps (fractionation, stabilisation) combined with downstream co-processes technologies at different levels of severities (temperature, hydrogen consumption, carbon yield): co-Fluid Catalytic Cracking, co-hydrodeoxygenation and co-hydrotreating. The project will establish relations between product’s properties, the quality of renewable feedstocks and the main process parameters. The study of these combinations will allow a full understanding of the influence of feedstock and treatment processes on product characteristics, describing, analysing and providing insight into synergetic effects. Tangible results include add-ons to existing flow sheeting programs/unit model, with the objectives to analyze different scenarios for further implementation into existing archetype refineries, and to be deployed in existing in-house programming tools used by the oil companies. The financial resources mobilized by the 8 partners represent a total grant of 5 965 474 € with a global effort of 549 PM.

The overall objective of REDIFUEL is to enable the utilization of various biomass feedstock for an ultimate renewable EN590 diesel biofuel (drop-in capable at any ratio) in a sustainable manner. REDIFUEL’S ambition is to develop new technologies, solutions and processes to be integrated to reach high conversion efficiencies for renewable fuel production. And, to proof the techno-economic potential to reach a highly competing production cost level of € 0.90 - 1.00 per litre (depending on biomass source) at moderate production plant sizes, e.g. 10-25 kt/a. The proposed drop-in biofuel contains high-cetane C11+ bio-hydrocarbons and C6-C11 bio-alcohols which has exceptional performance with respect to combustion and soot-inhibition properties. The environmental and the society aspects are taken into account by a comprehensive Biomass-to-Wheel performance check of the developed technologies.