Edition no. 12, 2017
Welcome to the  SPIRE Newsletter

Bringing you news, insights and success stories from within and about our  Public-Private Partnership  and the European Process Industry.

In this issue
Projects
SteamBio
SteamBio  is a SPIRE project that started in February 2015 and is due to finish in January 2018. The SteamBio process takes agro-forestry residues, treats them with superheated steam to create stable commercial outputs.
Already pilot trials have recovered viable quantities of tradable commodity chemicals, including lactic and acetic acid along with identified bio-based building blocks, for instance levulinic acid and furfurals. Following an economic assessment of the market opportunities, SteamBio Ltd has been registered as a business to exploit the project results.
From July this year until the end of the project a 150kg/hour throughput demonstration unit will be operating continuously every week, Monday through to Friday in rural locations, first in Northern Germany and then in Spain. Visitors are welcome!
The project will  be presented at the EUBCE in Stockholm 12th to 15th June 2017 as we seek to promote both visitors to our demonstrations, evaluation of the process outputs by the chemical industry and, commercial partners to take SteamBio into different markets and applications.

Disire
With the DISIRE project the properties of the raw materials or product flows will be fully integrated in a unique inline measuring system that will extend the level of knowledge and awareness of the internal dynamics of the undergoing processes taking place during transformation or integration of raw materials in the next levels of production. 

COCOP
COCOP is a collaborative 42-months SPIRE project that started the 1st October 2016. The vision of COCOP is that complex process-industry plants are optimally run by operators with the guidance of a coordinating, real-time optimisation system. COCOP will strengthen the global position of the European process industry, which represents 20 per cent of the European manufacturing base with around 450,000 companies generating €1.6 billion in turnover and 6.8 million jobs.
The COCOP`s objective is to enable plant-wide monitoring and control by using the model-based, predictive, coordinating optimisation concept in integration with plant's automation systems. COCOP will also combine the technological development with a social innovation process of co-creation and co-development for improving effectiveness and impact of the innovations.
 
BAMB- Building as Material Banks project
The context for Materials Passports and Reversible Building Design is important for the success of the Project. The BAMB State of the art report describes the current state of the art relevant for BAMB and currently known opportunities and barriers to a circular building sector, reversible building design and Materials Passports. 
 
 
REE4EU Project 
The third newsletter of the  REE4EU project , released last December, focuses on the first year project results.
During the first year, the consortium has completed Phase 1 of the project, which saw partners undertake lab-scale and off-line integration, tailoring the ionic liquid extraction (ILE) and high temperature electrolysis (HTE) steps of the project. The engineering teams IDENER and A3i-Inovertis, together with SINTEF, the University of Toulouse and Tecnalia, as well as the industrial partners responsible for the pilots, Elkem and Less Common Metals, established the corresponding conceptual engineering design for the process. Moreover, since the project involves the full value chain to prove technical and economic viability of this technology for recycling magnetic waste, a Value Chains Stakeholders Analysis Report has been realized by PNO, aiming at helping the REE4EU partners in setting up targeted dissemination and communications actions towards the relevant group of stakeholders from a specific value chain, and on the other hand, to provide information to the public at large on the relevant industrial and academic stakeholders that are connected to the topic of the recovery of REE. Furthermore a selected group of identified stakeholders are being interviewed to elaborate a market analysis on the most relevant EoL products containing REE. The Value Chain Stakeholder Analysis report is available at the project website.
 
MefCO2 exhibiting at the Energy Storage Europe and presenting its Stakeholder Community
 
The
Energy Storage Europe 2017  took place from the 14th to the 16th of March in Düsseldorf and MefCO2 project was in one of the exhibitors presenting its power-to-chemical approach as an alternative energy storage system.
It represented the link between the chemical and transport sectors based on the potential of chemicals, methanol in this case, conversion into fuels.
The audience had the opportunity to have face to face meetings with our colleagues from I-DEALS (project coordinator). The projects was presented with the current progress and its main goal to demonstrate the economic feasibility of valorising captured CO 2 by turning it into a versatile platform chemical and renewable fuel s uch as methanol using hydrogen produced from renewable energy surplus (through water electrolysis) that otherwise would have a low or negative value to the grid.
In addition to this, I-DEALS had the opportunity to present the MefCO2 Stakeholder Community. It has been created aiming to involve relevant stakeholders in the implementation and the results of the project which will allow MefCO2 consortium to broadly disseminate information on the project and its progress. It will also enhance awareness of the matters connected to the EU's Climate Action Plan, starting with the 2020 Package and associated binding legislation to ensure the EU meets its climate and energy targets for the year 2020.
 
 REslag Project
The 3rd follow-up meeting of the RESLAG project was hosted by Renotech Oy and VTT on the 29th and 30th of March in Turku (Finland).  
The project, coordinated by the Energy Cooperative Research Centre (CIC ENERGIGUNE) located in Vitoria, Spain, follows the full development of four different product valorization technologies for one of the main European industrial waste: electric arc furnace steel slag. The proposed valorization strategies include a wide industrial scope, demonstrating the feasibility of the innovative valorization solutions beyond the current state of the art. The mentioned technologies will be developed in a pre-industrial pilot scale by means of the construction of the corresponding demonstration facilities on each industrial application summarized below:  
  • Pilot 1: Slag as feedstock to extract high added value metals such as Fe, Mn and Cr.
  • Pilot 2: Slag as heat storage material for waste heat recovery in industrial processes, customized for the steelmaking environment
  • Pilot 3: Slag as thermal energy storage material for Concentrated Solar Power applications.
  • Pilot 4: Slag used as feedstock to create new processes for the production of refractory materials and ceramics.
During the last March 29th and 30th the last technical advances and milestones reached on the RESLAG project were discussed in detail.    
Overall, all the presented activities showed a huge potential of the technologies being developed in the RESLAG project. All the basic concepts proposed are currently under construction to show the real feasibility of the proposed innovative valorization strategies. This potential will be experimentally demonstrated in the following project execution period, ensuring the expected technical impact of the introduced innovations.
 
CoPro
The CoPro project started in November 2016 with the kick-off meeting in Brussels. 39 people from 17 partners and the project officer met to discuss expectations, objectives and the way forward in the project. In February 2017, the second plenary meeting took place in conjunction with the first exploitation workshop of the project. The workshop triggered the development of exploitation roadmaps that are implemented during and beyond the duration of the project. Three exploitation workshops are planned throughout the lifetime of CoPro.
 
Indus3Es Project 
The Indus3Es project is going to participate in the  4th International Conference on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow (HTFF'17) to be held in Rome in June 8-10.  This event aims to become the leading annual conference in fields related to heat transfer and fluid flow. The goal of HTFF'17 is to gather scholars from all over the world to present advances in the relevant fields and to foster an environment conducive to exchanging ideas and information. The Indus3Es project, funded in the frame of the SPIRE-related Horizon 2020 call EE-18-2015 will develop an innovative Absorption Heat Transformer (AHT) focused on low temperature waste heat recovery (below 130ºC, referred to a recovered waste heat source temperature) and it will effectively recover and revalorize almost 50% of the low temperature waste heat, increasing quality of the waste source to the required temperature and reusing it again in the industrial process. In its presentation, the Indus3Es system as well as the project results achieved so far will be outlined and discussed in the framework of the conference topics related to the Heat valorization and recovery.
 
Mirsens 4 Workshop - iCspec  
The iCspec Project consortium organizes the 4th International Workshop on Opportunities and Challenges in Mid-Infrared Laser-based Gas Sensing (Mirsens 4) to be held at Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wroclaw, Poland, 15 - 17 May 2017.
The use of laser sources in gas sensing applications has been increasing continuously in recent years. Tunable laser absorption spectroscopy (TLAS) has proven to be a versatile tool in a variety of sectors including, health & security, modern environmental analysis and process control in industry. The MIR wavelength region is of particularly high interest for optical sensing applications as a huge variety of technologically and industrially relevant gas species have their strongest and some even their only absorption features in this range. 
The Mirsens 4 Workshop covers all the issues related to developments of modern MIR materials, technologies and sensing schemes. The Workshop topics include:
  • Semiconductor materials and heterostructures for the MIR
  • Recent progress in MIR laser sources
  • Laser-based gas sensing and spectroscopic techniques
  • New application prospects
The previous Mirsens workshops took place in 2010 and 2012 in Wroclaw, and in 2015 in Würzburg.  Mirsens 4 will be organized as a combination of plenary lectures given by worldwide recognized experts and short oral contributed presentations, plus a poster session.
 
SYMBIOPTIMA
In the context of industrial agglomerations, the SYMBIOPTIMA project focuses on the promotion of mutual interaction of diverse industries for beneficial reuse of flows that could result in a more resource-efficient production at network level, and in fewer adverse environmental impacts. 15 partners from 7 different countries are working together towards the creation of synergic and optimized flows of industrial networks. 
The project is halfway, with important results already achieved: the first release of the SYMBIOPTIMA ERMS (Energy and Resource Management System) with the tools for energy, cross flow and sustainability assessment and optimization is available. Further to this, the hardware technologies for SYMBIOPTIMA distributed smart and thermal monitoring, as well as for process symbiosis have been delivered.
Demos of developed sustainability LCA tool for the human-mimetic symbiotic cluster and of energy-aware scheduling tool will be presented during the first project workshop that will be held in the context of the  International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation at the end of June.  Further info on the workshop will be available soon .

EPOS INSIGHTS
EPOS Insights are publications summarising the most relevant outcomes of the EU funded EPOS project.
This edition of Insights looks at Industrial Symbiosis in the Humber Region, UK.  It is a summary of the preliminary analysis and results of the first EPOS project business case.
 
MORE
FP7 Project MORE: guidebook to identify and select relevant real-time resource efficiency indicators (REIs)
From 2013 to 2017, the project MORE - co-funded within the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration - has developed indicators to measure resource efficiency of chemical production plants during daily operations and implemented optimization methods into four industrial plants. The developments help to optimize plant operations towards resource efficiency - in environmental and economic terms.
Indicators for the resource consumption and environmental impact of products and production processes in the process industry are developed and are increasingly used for many purposes. Most companies monitor their energetic and material efficiency and report Key Performance Indicators (KPI), normally in retrospect over extended periods of time (e.g. per business year). KPIs reflect the choice of raw materials, the plant technology used and the operational performance without distinguishing between the different influences. As such, they cannot support decision making processes in daily plant operations. With real-time Resource Efficiency Indicators (REI), the effect of technical improvements and operational policies can be measured and actions can be derived for real-time or near real-time plant performance improvements.
In order to summarize the outcomes of the experiences and findings that have been made during its lifetime, a step-by-step guidebook has been developed. This guidebook supports the European process industry in the identification and the selection of relevant real-time resource efficiency indicators (REIs). The methodology consists of twelve steps including the selection of the process units under consideration, the identification and selection of the relevant REIs, and their implementation.
The MORE Guidebook provides a technical introduction to the methods needed and a detailed step-by-step procedure to successfully implement the core ideas of real-time resource efficiency monitoring and improvement.

IMPACTWS
SPIRE Impact Workshop
The European Commission is organising, with the support of A.SPIRE, a Workshop on the Impact of the 3 cPPPs FoF, EeB and SPIRE, which will take place in Brussels on 17 May 2017. 
The purpose of the workshop is to facilitate the assessment of the cPPPs' implementation, while at the same time gathering information of the impact achieved by projects in related areas running in FP7 and H2020. Several success stories from the 3 cPPPs will be highlighted and 2 panel discussions on the results achieved so far and on how to stimulate post project life impact will be held. 

This year d ue to logistical constraints, SPIRE will  invite only the newly awarded SPIRE projects.  All other projects can attend the meeting via web-streaming (the link will be shared when the date approaches).
IndS
Industrial Symbiosis Workshop: follow-up
The first SPIRE Thematic Workshop took place on 30 March with the topic of Industrial Symbiosis (IS). The workshop is the first of a series of Thematic Workshops to be organised by SPIRE with future themes chosen by the SPIRE community.
The full-day workshop saw a morning session that gave industry perspectives on IS from representatives of SPIRE sectors including cement, steel, engineering, chemicals, water and ceramics. This session was concluded with an example of IS in action from the Smart Delta Resource initiative in Zeeland.
After lunch aspects of IS methodology were outlined by representatives of SPIRE projects MAESTRI, EPOS and SHAREBOX and the IS related objectives of the RESYNTEX project described. The workshop was concluded by an extended panel discussion examining how SPIRE can support the development of IS in its future activities..

ProcessIND
Process Industry Conference: 19 September 2017
The Process Industry Conference, a SPIRE mid-term policy event, will take place on 19 September 2017 and intends to gather all relevant stakeholders for the European Process Industry.  This first day (open to all interested stakeholders) will be dedicated to picturing the future EU Process Industry and what can be implemented if appropriate investments and funds are met. The SPIRE projects' day will be organized on the same day.  Other two days  reserved to a A.SPIRE members only  will follow   (20-21/09) and include thematic sessions and brokerage event.

Further information will be circulated shortly!
EuroPACT
SPIRE Projects' booth at EuroPACT 2017
EUROPACT 2017 is the 4th European Conference on Process Analytics and Control Technology.
The conference will cover new technologies in process analytics, the implementation of these technologies in various fields and the transformation of data into knowledge. 
SPIRE projects will be present with a group booth in the exhibition area Consens , ProPAT, IbD
SHAREBOXFUDIPODISIRE. The conference takes place 10-12 May 2017 in Potsdam (nearby Berlin), Germany.

EventsMay
Upcoming events
  • ICT SPRING EUROPE 2017,  9-10 May 2017, Luxembourg. More info...
  • International Conference on Bio-based Materials, 10-11 May 2017, Cologne, Germany. More info...
  • EuroPACT 2017, 10-12 May 2017, Potsdam, Germany. More info...
  • DecarbHeat 2017, 11-12 May 2017, Brussels, More info...
  • EUBCE 2017 - European Biomass Conference & Exhibition, 12-15 June 2017, Stockholm, Sweden. More info...
  • Water Innovation Europe 2017, 14-15 June 2017, Brussels. More info...
  • EU Sustainable Energy Week 2017, 19-25 June 2017, Brussels. More info...
  • Sustainable Places 2017, 28 June 2017, Middlesborough, UK. More info...
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