Edition no. 14, 2017

Projects

2017 SPIRE Projects

SPIRE 7 - Process o ptimisation
  • ENSUREAL
  • SUPREME
  • Morse
SPIRE 8 - CO2 u tilisation
  • ICO2CHEM
  • RECODE
  • Carbon4PUR 
SPIRE 9 - Down-scaled high performance processing
  • NOVUM
  • ECCO
  • PORTABLECRAC
SPIRE 10 - New electrochemical solutions
  • OCEAN
  • SIDERWIN
SPIRE 11 - Enhancement of the SPIRE impact
  • SPRING
SPIRE 12 - Standardisation
  • HARMONI
SPIRE 13 - Industrial Symbiosis
  • SCALER
SPIRE-related call: CIRC-01-2016 - Systemic, eco-innovative approaches for the circular economy: large-scale demonstration projects
  • FiberEUse: Large scale demonstration of new circular economy value-chains based on the reuse of end-of-life fiber reinforced composites
  • PAPERCHAIN: New market niches for the Pulp and Paper Industry waste based on circular economy approaches
  • Ecobulk: Circular Process for Eco-Designed Bulky Products and Internal Car Parts
  • CIRC-PACK: Towards circular economy in the plastic packaging value chain
  • PlastiCircle: Improvement of the plastic packaging waste chain from a circular economy approach
  • Systemic: Systemic large scale eco-innovation to advance circular economy and mineral recovery from organic waste in Europe
  • PolyCE: Post-Consumer High-tech Recycled Polymers for a Circular Economy
  • ZERO-BRINE: Re-designing the value and supply chain of water and minerals: a circular economy approach for the recovery of resources from saline impaired effluent (brine) generated by process industries
  Check out our projects' dedicated page on the SPIRE website! 

Tackle the Future of Plant Operation - Jointly towards a digital process industry

The results of five SPIRE projects -  CONSENS DISIRE iCspec ProPAT  and  RECOBA will be presented at the workshop  Tackle the Future of Plant Operation - Jointly towards a digital process industry, on 13-14 December in Barcelona. In these projects, 17 major corporations from diverse sectors of process industry have joined forces with more than 40 technology companies  and with research institutes and universities to shape the future of plant operation. This became possible through the  SPIRE Private Public Partnership , in which European Commission cooperates with the industry, shaping an R&D agenda according to the future needs of the European process industry.

The workshop will give perspectives on digitalization, and debate the next steps for addressing the needs of the European Process Industry. There will be also be ample opportunity for discussing opportunities for future R&D collaborations.
 
Further info...
An autumn start for SPRING...
The newly blossomed Project SPRING is tasked with helping enhance the impact of SPIRE projects.
If the SPIRE roadmap goals - ambitious resource, energy and emissions savings in the EU process industries - are to be realised, it is essential that SPIRE project outputs are taken up widely and implemented by industry. Consequently, SPRING is focused on addressing the needs and barriers of those who make the decisions to adopt process innovations in industry.
The two-year Coordination and Support Action, which started on 1st September, has been developed to provide the mechanism to enhance the impact of all SPIRE projects, rather than just focusing on a small cluster of projects. In other words, SPRING can help you increase industrial uptake of your project findings.
The project partners in the industry led consortium represent a wide range of existing SPIRE projects: Britest (coordinating - representing STYLE), iris (SHAREBOX, IbD and PROPAT), INEOS (EPOS) and CRIT (DREAM and FoF-IMPACT). The consortium is completed by A.SPIRE, maximising connectivity across the SPIRE landscape, and the University of Leeds Centre for Decision Research.
Over the next 2 years SPRING will be addressing questions like:
  • How would someone from industry find out about relevant outputs from SPIRE projects?
  • How would someone from academia find out about educational and training resources from SPIRE projects?
  • What are the best ways of measuring and managing impact within a project?
  • How do we meaningfully aggregate (high confidence) impact data at the project level to the cross-sector, EU-scale needed for SPIRE and Commission programme monitoring?
  • How can we improve consistency between project sustainability evaluations?
Attendees at the SPIRE Conference in September have already heard about, and had an opportunity via a workshop to feed into, SPRING's plans to initiate SPIRE Coordinator and Sustainability Practitioner network groups. Look out for future communications regarding these soon.
If you want to be added to our stakeholders list for opportunities to input and receive further updates, please email: amy.peace@britest.co.uk
News on the project can also be followed through Twitter and the project website.
Sustainable Chemistry driving the Circular Economy: Using waste gas from steel for plastics
A new project Carbon4PUR will bring together 14 partners from seven countries to develop and demonstrate the sustainable use of waste carbon dioxide (CO2) as an alternative feedstock for chemical processes. This Horizon 2020 project is funded through SPIRE.

The use of carbon dioxide and other waste gases as a new source of raw materials is increasingly a topic of interest in Europe and both SusChem and SPIRE have developed calls in this area. Carbon4PUR will now investigate how flue gas from the steel industry can be used to produce plastics in a particularly efficient and sustainable way replacing conventional carbon input from fossil fuel sources.

EPOS
The EPOS project - Enhanced energy and resource Efficiency and Performance in process industry Operations via onsite and cross-sectorial Symbiosis - brings together five global process industries from five key relevant sectors: steel, cement, chemicals, minerals and engineering.
Now at its half-way point, the EPOS project is well on its way to developing a simple and single management tool for exploring industrial symbiosis across process sectors. This was demonstrated by all of the EPOS partners through their contributions at the recent biannual strategic meeting held from September 12-13, 2017 in Hull, UK.
After the successful consortium meeting, a press conference was held on September 14, 2017 for local representatives from government, the media and industrial bodies. The goal of this press conference was to inform interested organisations and the general public about the EPOS project and to highlight its role in helping process industry in the UK realise significant improvements in business performance and sustainability.
 
Read more about EPOS ...

MONSOON: data analysis in progress 

The project MONSOON has completed its 'ramp-up' phase, whose goal was to start up the data collection from Aluminium Pechiney and GLN Plast plants. The connection system to transmit data in real time from these two industrial sites to the MONSOON data lab, placed in TUK University, has been deployed and tested, and now is regularly working.
Now that the data collection has been launched, the MONSOON consortium is working on the enrichment of the initial connection infrastructure and on the initial analysis of the data through machine and deep learning techniques. It is worth mentioning that even though the two industrial plants operate in different manufacturing fields, the modelization required in both cases to perform data analytics presents many analogies. This supports a cross-sectorial collaboration within the project.
The data lab is conceived not only to store the data, but also to provide the environment for the data analysis and for the training of the learning algorithms on both domains. The data scientists are now at work, supported by the industrial experts, to extract all the relevant information from the data and to develop optimal learning strategies. This task is continuously fed by the acquisition of new data and by the continuous refinement of use cases and related KPIs. In particular, after the trend analysis phase, classification problems are now tackled, such as the prediction of undesired process stops or the distinction of good/bad quality final products from the processes parameters.

BAMB
The results of the BAMB, Buildings As Material Banks, project are starting to take shape. Check out the progress on the pilots, materials passports and business models. Follow us on our web and social media for continues updates. BAMB, Buildings As Material Banks, is a EU Horizon 2020 project enabling the shift to a circular building sector. The project is developing and integrating tools that will enable the shift: Materials Passports and Reversible Building Design - supported by new business models, policy propositions and management and decision-making methods. During the course of the project these new approaches will be demonstrated and refined with input from 6 pilots.

The REE4EU Value chains stakeholders analysis report

The Value Chains Stakeholders Analysis Report performed in the framework of the REE4EU project provides a helicopter view on the most relevant stakeholders (mainly European) who are connected to the topic of recovery of Rare Earth Element (REE) in general and more specifically to the REE4EU value chains, by selecting first the most important products and applications identified by expert groups as the most significant EoL products with the highest potential for REE recovery (coherently with the European Rare Earths Competency Network (ERECON) report).
The project, funded in the frame of Horizon 2020 TOPIC SPIRE-07-2015 , will realize a breakthrough innovation in the field of Recovery Technologies for Metals and other Minerals. It will make available Rare Earth elements and Rare Earth alloys for magnet production by developing, for the first time at industrial scale, an efficient and cost effective method of extraction and a direct production route for Rare Earth Alloys which will be achieved through in-process and End-of-Life permanent magnets as well as Ni metal hydride battery waste. 

To have access to this interesting report, please register to the project website 
INSPIREWATER Newsletter
The INSPIREWATER  newsletter is out! It provides you with current information on the project progress, especially at its demo sites and its technologies and it gives an overview on the activities within INSPIREWATER.
INSPIREWATER is an application-oriented project that needs a strong input from the global companies, SME's and research institutions to reach solutions in the process industry for next generation resource efficient water management - in order to support the reduction of water use, raw materials, chemicals, save energy and reduce waste and wastewater discharge. The newsletters will have a "series on the INSPIREWATER demo sites" where descriptions and actual actions of the sites are presented. This issue presents the
demo site ArcelorMittal in Gijón, Spain. It gives a good insight in how strong the partners in INSPIREWATER work together.

KARMA2020 

Funded under the topic "SPIRE-03-2016: Industrial technologies for the valorisation of European bio-resources into high added value process streams", and started in January 2017, the project KaRMA2020 aims to the industrial manufacture and exploitation of sustainable raw materials from feather waste to develop innovative green products for high impact cross-sectorial markets, such as hydrolysed keratin, bioplastics, flame retardant coatings, spun bonded non-wovens and thermoset bio-based resins. During the 4 years of the project, these objectives will be achieved through:
  • Improvement of feather waste pre-treatments and conditioning processes
  • Optimization of the isolation of keratin and other feather-based raw materials
  • Validation of the feather-based raw material

During the first months, the KaRMA2020 consortium has been working extensively to set up the strategies for pre-treatment and processing of the poultry feathers. These phases of the project represent the necessary steps to best optimize the following feather conversion methods and the future exploitation processes of the raw materials.

After 9 months from its beginning, the KaRMA2020 project participated in the International Conference on Biobased and Biodegradable Polymers (BIOPOL 2017) held in Mons (Belgium) on 11-13 September 2017. The conference provides a forum for researchers, students and companies from all over the world to exchange up-to-date ideas and opinions on current research and new applications of biopolymers and biocomposites. The project coordinator CIDETEC at BIOPOL 2017 had the opportunity to present to this scientific and industrial community the recent results of the KaRMA2020 project. 

 

Further info...

FUDIPO Newsletter 
FUDIPO project started last 1st October 2016. It has been granted the  SPIRE-02-2016 topic: "Plant-wide monitoring and control of  data-intensive processes", developing and testing  an integrated set of methods combining mathematical modelling and simulation with experiments in pilot and full-scale facilities: oil  refinery, pulp and paper, heat power plants, and waste water treatment plant.  One year after, the project showcases first outcomes.
RESYNTEX's participation in different forums
The project was showcased in a session of LCM 2017, in which the LCA, modelling and process impacts were discussed.
 
In addition, the National Technical University of the Athens, Department of Chemical Engineering, also presented a paper at ESCAPE 27 in Barcelona. The title was 'Design of Circular Economy Plants - The Case of the Textile Recycling Plant'.  The Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering (ESCAPE 27) took place 1-5 October. 

factsandfigures
SPIRE - 2016 facts and figures
cPPPs (Contractual Public Private Partnerships) have the obligation to fulfil the annual Progress Monitoring Report. This report provides decision makers with an overview of the activities of the cPPP, its outcomes and the supporting evidence. This puts a strong emphasis on the strategic dimension of the cPPP and its achievements (i.e. impact on increased competitiveness of the EU industry, creation of jobs, increased focus on activities of high added value). 

A.SPIRE prepared a summary focused on business, environmental and socioeconomic impact.

In 2016, the SPIRE PPP has witnessed:
  • The end of 3 projects (CSA's from SPIRE-04-2014)
  • The mid-term milestone (average of 69% of their activity by the end of 2016) of the unfinished projects related to 2014 calls (15)
  • The consolidation (average of 45% of their activity by the end of 2016) of projects related to 2015 calls (18).
  • The actual start of projects related to 2016 calls (18)
The 2016 calls were in line with the priorities defined in the Multi-Annual Roadmap both in terms of themes as well as of time horizon. The targets anticipated in the publishable project synopsis are well in line with the main KPIs in the Multiannual Roadmap in terms of economic (including intellectual property generated and growth potential), environmental & social benefits....

Daniel
DANIEL GAUTHIER is the new chairmain of the SPIRE HORIZON 2020 cPPP
Mr Daniel Gauthier takes over the role from Dr Klaus Sommer of Bayer, who is stepping down after seven years of service to the SPIRE community during which it has grown from a conceptual idea to a thriving sustainable cross-sectorial research and innovation community.
Mr Daniel H. J. Gauthier has had a long and illustrious career in the cement sector with more than 30 years' experience in various operational positions. He currently serves as President of CBR S.A. (the Belgian subsidiary of HeidelbergCement) and has held many senior roles within the HeidelbergCement Group including membership of the Managing Board. He remains an advisor to the CEO of HeidelbergCement
Mr Gauthier is Chairman of the European Cement Research Association (ECRA) and was Chairman of CEMBUREAU (The European Cement Association) from June 2015 to June 2017. He is also a Member of Board of Carmeuse Holding S.A., Genlis-Metal and Adial, and a Member of the Board of the University of Mons. He is Chairman of the Strategic Committee of the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons and Chairman of Ingénieurs sans frontiers.

GA
A.SPIRE General Assembly and Thematic Workshop on business models
The SPIRE association invites all the official representatives of its members to participate in our General Assembly and Thematic Workshop on business models, co-organised with the  INSPIRE project.

During the General Assembly the discussion will be centered around management priorities of the Association, advancements of the SPIRE PPP and  expectations for 2018. 

Looking forward to welcoming you on the 23rd of November!
paper
For an ambitious EU industrial strategy: going further
Following the adoption last February of a first Joint Declaration for an ambitious EU industrial strategy, the coalition of associations has continued to work together to develop a more detailed Joint Paper in reaction to the Communication on "Investing in a smart, innovative and sustainable Industry: a renewed Industrial Strategy for Europe" published by the European Commission in September.
This Communication is definitely a first important step as it puts industry back in a high position on the political agenda and provides a comprehensive overview of current and upcoming Commission's initiatives and measures related to industrial competitiveness. 

In this Joint Reaction Paper, A.SPIRE and the other Signatories - representing a wide range of industrial sectors - have identified all key objectives and missing measures that should be at the heart of any ambitious and longer-term EU industrial strategy, taking the Communication as a starting point. The recommendations of the #Industry4Europe coalition touch upon major policy fields, including business-friendly environment and governance, skills & training, research and innovation, access to finance, internal market as well as trade and international market access. 
EUPIConf
EU Process Industry Conference: 19 September 2017 - Follow-up
The first day of SPIRE's 2017 EU Process Industry Conference on 19 September took a look to the 
Future of European Process Industry from a range of perspectives: the European Commission, the Industry itself, and SPIRE cPPP. The debate was enriched by contributions from 
Rudy de Waele , Futurist and innovation strategist.

In his last presentation as SPIRE Chairman,  Klaus Sommer  praised SPIRE PPP as an inherently open and highly collaborative initiative that was providing innovation foresight and a route towards the next generation of sustainable process industries. SPIRE looked to reinvent feedstocks, reduce emissions, introduce digital for better monitoring and control, reinvent materials and processes with significant ecological impact down the value chain, and reduce waste to create true circularity in the economy. Clearly SPIRE is well aligned with EU priorities and was now running at full speed.

Daniel Gauthier, SPIRE's newly elected chairperson, thanked Dr Sommer for guiding SPIRE from a concept into a reality and conceded that it would be a challenge to take SPIRE to the next level. But to help make a better Europe, he thought there was a need to define a new vision and new even more ambitious targets for SPIRE. 
In the afternoon, short success stories from  48 SPIRE projects were showcased and illustrated the huge achievements that this first cross-sectorial cPPP has made since its launch at the very end of 2013. 

The  second and third day (20 and 21 September) were reserved for A.SPIRE members and colleagues from the Commission. On the 20th the focus was on specific topics of interest for future innovation developments by the SPIRE Community and parallel thematic discussions based on ideas from the SPIRE membership, while the 21st was SPIRE's annual Brokerage event with a focus on the forthcoming 2018-19 Horizon 2020 work programme and calls where there would be some EUR 320 million of public funding available for new SPIRE projects largely aiming at large scale demonstrations, prompting industrial deployment and targeting breakthrough advances across the process industry, through industrial symbiosis, recycling and recovery. 

SPIRE has already shown itself to be a worthwhile effort and investment and is a key element in building a sustainable Europe, however the hard work will need to continue until 2020 and beyond: for SPIRE - and the Future EU Process Industry - the best is still to come!


infodays
Industrial innovation Infodays - SPIRE seen as 'Well on track' in Commission Review
This year's  industrial innovation information days 2017 were organised by t he European Commission  with the support of the cPPPs and external stakeholders, on the 3-4 October 2017.

The mid-term review of contractual Public Private Partnerships (cPPPs) was presented on 4 October 2017; t he 10 cPPPs were all evaluated in the review in a holistic manner. The review group made a number of recommendations for the future of cPPPs and found the Sustainable Process Industry through Resource and Energy Efficiency (SPIRE) cPPP to be mainly 'well on track' in a multi-dimensional review.
The review had analysed monitoring reports and interacted with the cPPP associations and other stakeholders to form the basis of their report. Overall the group concluded that the cPPPs had fulfilled their role of enabling more involvement and commitment from industry in Horizon 2020. The efficiency overall of the CPPPs - in terms of time to grant - was better than the average for Horizon 2020 and FP7 and their general success rate was higher than the average for Horizon 2020.

Six recommendations
The review made six recommendations that are summarised below:
  1. The process of translating priorities from the cPPPs roadmap into calls should be more participatory, ensuring clear links between roadmaps and calls under a common process between the industrial association and the European Commission. More focused calls could increase the effectiveness and the quality of proposals.
  2. The governance of cPPPs should be revised to further enhance the transparency of the management processes, widen the debate and update reference roadmaps focussing on reaching the highest number of stakeholders and broader society.
  3. The links between the cPPPs and the other European Commission instruments should be strengthened.
  4. It was strongly recommended that the KPI framework of all cPPPs is redesigned and coordinated by the European Commission as soon as possible. This is an issue that SPIRE highlighted at a recent Commission cPPP Impact workshop as there is no common methodology to evaluate KPIs.
  5. To enhance the impact of the cPPPs on national and regional policies to increase their EU value-added, Member States should be represented in the cPPPs via suitable mechanisms.
  6. Finally, the Expert Group supported the recommendation of the Fab-Lab-App report published earlier in the year to move towards a mission-driven approach in the next Framework Programme with industrial associations and the European Commission working together to mobilise joint investments that can tackle industrial, scientific and societal challenges.
A.SPIRE reaction and methodology note

According to the cPPPs report, SPIRE Success Rate is 8,6%. This amount does not correspond to reality because the methodology applied compares all SPIRE funded projects with all proposals presented, whether they are SPIRE-related or not (for example, some proposals of the WASTE, CIRC, LCE, EE calls are SPIRE-related and contribute to the SPIRE2030 roadmap goals, but NOT ALL OF THEM. This represents a bias in the calculation).

SPIRE methodology in the Progress Monitoring Reports is the one to be applied to avoid bias. SPIRE Success Rate has moved from 18% (2014) to 15% (2015) and to 27% (2016). The calculation of the rate is based on all the SPIRE funded projects in relation to all SPIRE proposals presented. Based on the numbers above, the average rate for SPIRE calls (and SPIRE related) along the three first years of H2020 programme is 20%.

The European Commission took into account our position but could not change the report. 

WP20182020
New Work Programme 2018-2020
The European Commission announced how it will spend €30 billion of the EU research and innovation funding programme Horizon 2020 during 2018-2020, including €2.7 billion to kick-start a European Innovation Council.

newmembers
Welcome to our new  A.SPIRE  members
In September 2017, the following organisations joined A.SPIRE:  
We warmly welcome them and hope that their contribution will make our PPP even stronger.  

EventsMay
Upcoming events
  • EU Research and Innovation Day at COP23, 15 November 2017, Bonn, Germany. More info...
  • ICT Proposers' Day 2017, 9-10 November, Budapest, Hungary. More info...
  • European Big Data Value Forum, 21-23 November 2017, Versailles, France. More info...
  • 2017 European Ceramic Days, 22 November, Brussels. More info... 
  • A.SPIRE General Assembly and Thematic Workshop on business models, 23 November, Brussels, Belgium. More info will be sent by email.
  • Water Knowledge Europe 2017, 29-30 November 2017, Brussels. More info...
  • European Forum for Electronic Components and Systems (EFECS) 2017, 5-7 December 2017, Brussels. More info...
  • Tackle the Future of Plant Operation - Jointly towards a digital process industry, 13-14 December, Barcelona, Spain. More info... 
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