Water splitting for H2 production driven by solar energy is quite attractive while the current efficiency is very moderate due to both the extremely sluggish water oxidation half reaction and limited light harvesting (mostly UV-visible light). In addition, the separation of one product H2 from the other O2 during water splitting is very costly. The project is designed to address these challenges by i) utilizing the full solar spectrum (300-2500nm) instead of UV-visible light (300-700nm), ii) coupling water splitting with biomass-derivative oxidation to avoid water oxidation, iii) well combining solid Z-scheme UV-visible photocatalysis and Infrared-driven thermal catalysis, and iv) using a flow double tube reactor other than batch reactors, thus targeting to produce green H2 from both water and biomass with a high quantum yield of 60% . Furthermore the project will co-produce high-value chemicals with a high selectivity of >90%. In addition, the integration of low-cost and efficient catalysts with novel flow reactors will assure a continuous and efficient production of H2 and high-value chemicals. The entire process does not use fossil fuels nor produce CO2, thus a zero carbon-emission technology. Finally the system can be readily scaled up by numbering up the reactor modules. All these are built upon a multidisciplinary and international consortium with the global experts in photocatalysis, thermal catalysis, reactor engineering, product separation, simulation and social science. Therefore the scientific and technical challenges, as well as the environmental, societal and economic impacts will be fully addressed in the project. The proposed technology will typically benefit the EU economy by an innovative green H2 production process from water and biomass, heavily contributing to a low carbon society. In addition, the international team including members from Asia will facilitate the technology exploitation out of the EU, to further benefit the EU economy.

EFESTO-2 is the natural follow-on of the project EFESTO (H2020 grant 821801) and it aims at increasing the European know-how and technology capabilities in the field of Inflatable Heat Shields (IHS). It will lean on the great achievements obtained in the frame of the father project EFESTO by implementing the needed forward advance to improve the current TRL for future re-entry missions. The project pillars will be: -to consolidate the use-case applicability through a deep business case analysis for a meaningful space application -to extend the investigation spectrum of the father project “EFESTO” to other critical aspects of the IHS field -to increase the confidence-level and robustness of tools/models and know-how developed in the frame of the father project “EFESTO” -to ensure continuity in presiding the IHS field in Europe among the scientific and industrial community The inflatable heat shields can be considered as a fundamental mean to both decelerate and protect the space system during re-entry, thus providing key contribution to the functions of re-entry and descent, therefore EFESTO-2 will satisfactorily fulfil the objectives of the HE call “HORIZON-CL4-2021-SPACE-01-23” contributing to the part of the scope strictly related with entry/descent systems and solutions. In particular EFESTO-2 will contribute to: -expansion of commercial space transportation offer and services because maturation of Inflatable Heat Shields will allow their applicability to recovery and reuse of launcher’s stages -execution of design and performance studies as well as business cases analysis with ad-hoc work packages -maturation of relevant technologies up to TRL 5-6 through a ground test campaign -matching the EU Green Deal objective because maturation of Inflatable Heat Shields technology can replace propulsion devices in end-of-life disposal/de-orbiting of space systems, hence reducing environmental impact of space debris as well as of chemical propulsion.

The main objective of the RETEX MSCA SE project is to form a world class international and inter-sectoral network of organizations, working on a joint research programme in the field of novel Sustainable Electronic Textile Materials, by replacing conventional textile materials with sustainable, environmentally friendly, and advanced materials such as; regenerated fibres from cotton fabrics. This can only be achieved by bringing together world-class experts in materials, polmers, environmentalists, chemists, software engineers, and designers with state-of-the-art innovations and processes in their respective fields of expertise. The participants will exchange skills and knowledge to create sustainable textile materials, strengthening collaborative research between different countries and sectors. RETEX will also refine and produce potential commercial market opportunities for non-academic participants in the project .Our goal is to train next generation of researchers and innovators in sustainable textiles through cross-sectoral and training modules. The staff members will develop new skills, be exposed tonew research and innovation environments, international networks, new industrial processes and techniques whilst widening and enriching career development through cross-sectoral knowledge transfer and international mobility.

The ICARUS initiative targets to fulfil the following call’s objectives: 1) contribution to the maturation up to TRL5-6 of enabling new technologies and subsystems (including common building blocks) in the field of re-entry solutions for space transportation; 2) maturation up to subsystem and system level technology demonstration with respect to the technologies for recovery of Space Transport vehicles elements: launcher stages; In that regard, the project will address the innovative re-entry solution based on Inflatable Heat Shields (IHS), deemed applicable for recovery of Launch Vehicles stages. In order to demonstrate applicability of this innovative solution for the purpose above, the project will pursue the following endgoals: a) complete the maturation on ground of the key technologies enabling the Inflatable Heat shields: Flexible TPS and Inflatable Structure; b) carry out a mission/system design loop to realize and fly (in relevant environment) a meaningful-scale demonstrator of an Inflatable Heat Shield through a flight on board a sounding rocket where the upper part of the rocket will be recovered thanks to the IHS Demonstrator; c) execute post-flight analysis and rebuilding for technology performance evaluation, system behaviour identification, and models verification/cross-correlation; The project will lean not only on the achievements and know-how obtained in the frame of the father projects EFESTO/EFESTO-2 (respectively funded by H2020 and Horizon Europe first-batch) but also on the partners ‘heritage in the re-entry and flight demonstration field consolidated through past/recent projects. The current programmatic picture of the initiative is: • to lean on a full EU consortium • to complete the project in a ≈ 4-year plan • to carry out 1 flight campaign in EU with exploitation of EU assets (test range, sounding rockets, ground segment)

The main objective of the SMARTWASTE MSCA SE project is to form a world class international and inter-sectoral network of organizations, working on a joint research programme in the field of novel Sustainable Smart Textile Materials, by replacing conventional and high costs textile materials with sustainable, environmentally friendly, cheaper and novel materials such as cellulose fibres from tomato stems waste and creating nonwovens from unconventional poplar seed fibers. This can only be achieved by bringing together world-class experts in materials, polymers, environmentalists, chemists, software engineers, and designers with state-of-the-art innovations and processes in their respective fields of expertise. The participants will exchange skills and knowledge to create sustainable textile materials, strengthening collaborative research between different countries and sectors. SMARTWASTE will also refine and produce potential commercial market opportunities for non-academic participants in the project (WP7). Our goal is to train next generation of researchers and innovators in sustainable textiles through cross-sectoral and training modules. The staff members will develop new skills, be exposed to new research and innovation environments, international networks, new industrial processes and techniques whilst widening and enriching career development through cross-sectoral knowledge transfer and international mobility.