Duration: 01/01/2023 - 30/09/2023
Budget: 241.937,50 €
The HOOP Project will help to unlock bio-based investments and deploy local bio economies in Europe through a systemic and cross-cutting approach. It will offer Project Development Assistance (PDA) to a group of 8 lighthouse cities and city clusters – to build the technical, economic, financial and legal expertise needed to develop concrete investments to valorise OFMSW (Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste) or UWWS (Urban Wastewater Sludge) with the aim of obtaining safe and sustainable bio-based products. Each PDA will contain detailed implementation assistance and a defined Circular Business Model tailored to each participating lighthouse city, as well as financing mechanisms to be used for mobilising investment. Moreover, HOOP will launch stakeholder engagement and citizen science initiatives to allow for the co-design of an improved collection of OFMSW for its later optimum valorisation. It will promote behavioural change and acceptability of biowaste-based products, as well as food waste prevention. The HOOP Project will also feature the HOOP Urban Circular Bioeconomy Hub (UCBH), an online platform that will provide opportunities to replicate the PDAs of the lighthouse cities in other follower cities (currently composed by 26 committed cities from all around Europe) – under the launch of the Network of Follower European Cities.
Duration: 01/04/2023 - 30/09/2023
Budget: 210.000 €
Anaerobic digestion (AD) of organic matter is a robust technology for biogas synthesis from different types of waste (sewage sludge from water treatment, animal slurry, bio-waste, etc.). The main goal of AD is the production of methane, a renewable energy source that can be used to generate electricity, heat or as vehicle fuel. Biogas is a mixture of methane (CH4; 55–70% of the total volume), carbon dioxide (CO2; 30–40%) and traces of other gases. In 2018, EU was the world’s largest producer of biomethane, reaching 2,28 bcm. However, from a purely engineering view, the microbial process underlying methane production is considered to be a black box: it is subjected to a degree of variability and it is an industrial process with a lot of room for improvement in the systematic optimisation of (1) yield, (2) quality, (3) speed and (4) robustness of the process. MICRO4BIOGAS aims to tackle these 4 aspects by integrating, for the first time, the use of microbial consortia that naturally inhabit anaerobic digesters with synthetic microbial consortia with improved capabilities, setting the basis for a user-friendly kit for bioaugmentation of biogas production (activities will be implemented at TRL3 with a TRL target of 5-6). Partners from 6 EU countries will work side by side to make a difference in the European biogas industry, that individually could not be achieved. By improving the biogas production in Europe, this project meets the EU Bioeconomy Strategy and the European Green Deal, helping to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG7: Affordable and clean energy; SDG13: Climate Action) and working towards the circularity, resource efficiency and sustainability of the European countries.
Duration: 01/01/2023 - 08/02/2025
Budget: 153.050,00 €
Fertilisation is key to feeding the growing world population, yet the most common fertilisation scheme based on conventional fertilisers poses threats to the environment (e.g. eutrophication caused by nutrient leaching) and sustainability of the EU food system (due to high dependence on fertiliser imports from third countries). Thus, among the key EU political priorities is to reduce by 20% the use of conventional fertilisers by 2030 and to decrease nutrient losses by 50%. A promising solution for this aim are alternative fertilisers produced from recovered nutrients from secondary raw materials (e.g. bio-waste, sewage sludge). However, their wide scale deployment is hindered by lack of awareness about alternative fertilisation, concerns regarding their technical viability and the disparity of legislations that creates a state of uncertainty. In this context, FER-PLAY is a comprehensive approach to gather, harmonise, select and complement the knowledge on alternative fertiliser value chains and diffuse it to promote the wide-scale production and application of alternative fertilisers with best environmental, social and economic performance as well as technical and regulatory viability. Thus, FER-PLAY employs a unique methodology for mapping the value chains, select the most promising ones and assess their impacts. FER-PLAY engages key stakeholders in co-creation of results and broadly disseminates them.
Duration: 01/07/2023 - 30/06/2027
Budget: 533.437,50 €
FUELPHORIA will demonstrate the establishment of sustainable complete value chains for advanced biofuels and RFNBOs for providing Europe with sustainable, secure and competitive energy supply schemes. The project will practically showcase a portfolio of nine complete Value Chains which will be set up and tested in real environment contexts with the active participation of all key players including: the feedstock suppliers (two biogas plants, a winery plant, an urban waste treatment plant); the technology providers who will convert through chemical, electrochemical, biological, thermochemical, and photobiological processes the feedstock (CO2, digestate, urban/ municipal biowaste) into an array of advanced biofuels and RFNBOs (light to long parafins i.e. CH4, medium/long chain hydrocarbons, esters i.e. biodiesel, and light alcohols i.e. ethanol, methanol) that meet quality specifications as defined by the end-users in the transport sector (aviation/maritime, road transport) and in the power production sector (gas or oil fired thermal plants), through four DEMOs in Europe (Belgium, Spain, Greece) while European export potential through international collaboration with Africa is also envisaged. Special emphasis will be also given to the logistics around the fuel production systems, i.e., for the sustainable supply of feedstock and the efficient transport of the final products to their end application. To do this, across the FUELPHORIA project the value chain approach is combined with the Life Cycle Assessment approach in order to not only consider all the different stages of the value chain from feedstock to end use but also to explore how the value chain operates as part of a larger system. FUELPHORIA will define and setup business models and marketing concepts and prepare market entry of the technology solutions as well as of the end-products, and will develop policy recommendations for realising the energy system transition potential.
