Around 461 million ton/year of C&DW are generated in EU28. Recent studies on the characterization of C&DW samples at European level revealed a predominant fraction of concrete (52% average). Over the last years, novel technology has been developed aiming to guarantee high quality recycled concrete aggregates for use in new concrete, thereby closing the concrete loop. The most advanced concrete recycling technologies currently produce coarse (>4mm) recycled concrete aggregates by removing cement paste from the surface of the aggregates. However, the fine (0-4 mm) fraction, ca. 40% of the concrete waste, still faces technical barriers to be incorporated into new concrete and consequently, is often down-cycled. At the other extreme, there are minor (e.g. glass) and emerging (e.g. mineral wool) C&DW materials, currently accounting for 0.7% of the total, but revealing growing rates as consequence of European regulations. Those emerging C&DW streams have not yet found technological and business solutions, being mostly landfilled. On the other hand, concrete is the most widely used material in building, with a growing trend towards prefabrication. The European precast concrete sector faces diverse needs for resource efficiency improvement (reduction in natural resource consumption and metabolization of waste materials, reduction in carbon footprint and embodied energy, design for reuse, increase in process efficiency and waste minimization, lighter solutions, enhanced thermal performance through novel cost-effective insulating materials). Aiming at facing these challenges, VEEP main objective is to eco-design, develop and demonstrate new cost-effective technological solutions that will lead to novel closed-loop circular approaches for C&DW recycling into novel multilayer precast concrete elements (for both new buildings and refurbishment) incorporating new concretes as well as superinsulation material produced by using at least 75% (by weight) of C&DW recycled materials.

With the aim to reduce workers’ exposure to live traffic and construction machines, increase the availability of the transport network, reduce the cost of repetitive tasks, and increase the safety of road users, InfraROB promotes significant advances in automating, robotising and modularizing the construction, upgrade and maintenance of the road infrastructure. By focussing on the road bed and, particularly, on roads paved with asphalt (the most widely applied type of pavement in Europe, accounting for 90% of all paved roads and highways ), the project will develop autonomous robotized systems/machinery for (i) (re)paving, (ii) repairing cracks/potholes in the road surface, and (iii) line marking. In addition, it will develop (iv) robotized safety systems for workers and road users. It will then develop (v) integrated one-piece precast construction elements for the roadside drainage serving a major degree of modularization in road design and construction/upgrade. In order to cope with optimal road maintenance planning, the project will furthermore upgrade existing Pavement Management Systems (PMS) to use digital twin models of road networks that track changes of their physical counterparts in real time, to give support for maintenance planning based on dynamic predictive modeling and the acquisition of real-time data on pavement conditions. Finally, yet evenly important, to provide for the safe and coordinated deployment of automated road maintenance robots, the project will attempt the integration of Pavement Management System (PMS) and Traffic Management System (TMS) solutions in order to allow for a holistic, integrated management of road infrastructure and traffic over the whole lifespan.

During the last decades a trend towards the use of lightweight materials in constructions and infrastructures, as well as in the aerospace and automotive industry is observed. Lightweight components are easy to transport, handle and install and demand less operational energy reducing substantially their environmental footprint and the relative costs. Among other materials, concrete and ceramics are on the focus of interest due to their wide range of application and their durability. Based on end applications lightweight attributes must be coupled with enhanced properties and multifunctionalities, such as high mechanical strength, self-sensing, self-cleaning properties, which can be achieved with the aid of nanomaterials. The main objective of the LightCoce project is to cover the gap in the upscaling and testing of multifunctional lightweight concrete and ceramic materials by providing open access to SMEs or Industry to a single entry point ecosystem consisting of already developed Pilot Lines (including three clusters of existing pilot lines; a. Concrete group, b. Conventional Ceramics group, and c. Advanced Ceramics group), process and materials modelling, Characterization, Standardisation, Regulatory, Safety & Environmental Assessment, Data Management and Innovation Management that will be accessible to the interested stakeholders at fair conditions and cost. The ecosystem will support the upscaling activities of European SMEs and industry, covering a large range of end applications from constructions materials (bricks, ceramic tiles), infrastructures (ready mix concrete, prefabricated components), to high tech applications in automotive & aerospace industry. Thus, LightCoce ecosystem targets will be achieved through the collaboration of a well-balanced multidisciplinary consortium consists of 26 Industrial and RTO partners well recognized and world leading experts in their fields: 5 Large Enterprise 8 RTDs, 12 SMEs, and 1 Association spread across 9 countries.

The main goal of Endurcrete Project is to develop a new cost-effective sustainable reinforced concrete for long lasting and added value applications. The concept is based on the integration of novel low-clinker cement including high-value industrial by-products, new nano and micro technologies and hybrid systems ensuring enhanced durability of sustainable concrete structures with high mechanical properties, self-healing and self-monitoring capacities. Among key technologies there are: nano-enabled smart corrosion inhibitors, self-sensing carbon-based nanofillers, multifunctional coatings with self-healing properties and sensorised non-metallic reinforcement systems. Innovative design concepts will be developed for smart installation, disassembly and re-use of the new green pre-cast and cast in place elements aiming at enabling easy recycling and re-using approaches. The functionality of the developed concrete structures will be proved under severe operating conditions supported by experimental and numerical tools to better understand factors affecting durability and capture the multiscale evolution of damage as well as to enable service life prediction. Demonstrators will be tested in working sites of tunnels, ports and offshore structures, in order to prove the enhanced durability (+40%, i.e. +30 years) and decreased cost (-35%) of the new concrete systems in such critical applications. Innovation aspects such standardization, life cycle assessments, health and safety and training activities will be performed. Finally, in order to maximize the exploitation of findings and ensure dissemination and impacts beyond the project duration, business models and plans for the proposed solutions will be developed. The Consortium, led by HeidelbergCement and involving 16 partners (6 SMEs), will have a strong economic and social impact (1billion € and 6900 high quality jobs by 2025), considering concrete markets and related applications. The foreseen project duration is 3.5 year

Concrete is the most widely used man-made material on Earth, with an annual consumption of around 10 billion m³. However, its fabrication is characterized by total CO2 emissions amounting to around 5% of the worldwide anthropogenic GHG emissions. More sustainable cements with lower embodied energy and CO2 footprint are needed. As stated in the European Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings (COM 2010/31/EU), the development of better performing insulation materials and lightweight systems for building envelopes is crucial, playing a significant role in the reduction of buildings operational energy while complying with the load bearing features of existing building structures. The ECO-binder project aims to implement industrial R&D activities on the results of previous research, demonstrating the possibility of replacing Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) and OPC based concrete products with new ones based on the new Belite-Ye’elimite-Ferrite (BYF) class of low-CO2 binders to develop a new generation of concrete-based construction materials and prefabricated building envelope components with more than 30% lower embodied energy, 20% improved insulation properties and 15% lower cost than the actual solutions based on Portland cement. The new building envelope solutions will integrate multiple functions in a single product package, providing the higher performances in terms of acoustic insulation/absorption, fire resistance, dimensional stability, indoor air quality optimization, at an affordable cost. Demonstration of full-scale retrofitting and construction will be performed prototyping and installing a family of prefabricated concrete systems of different complexity and end-use in four different climatic conditions involving public authorities.. Results will be validated through dedicated LCAs, fostering the construction materials sector progress towards increased performing and eco-sustainable products.