Humanity has exceeded planetary boundaries as is evident by the ongoing climate crisis. The linear economic model of ‘produce-use-dispose' has a major role in this, having driven manufacturing to operate in open-loop and even disregard for the environment. The transition to circularity is an imperative goal, yet there is a very slow uptake of circular practices and business models. ENCIRCLE aspires to accelerate this transition through technologies and solutions that optimize manufacturing towards sustainability and incentivize companies and consumers to think and act circularly. ENCIRCLE proposes a novel framework for environmental impact assessment via Digital Twins and Soft Sensors, incorporated in a virtual production line. Utilizing this virtual environment as a simulation and training space for AI, ENCIRCLE will decarbonize manufacturing, searching for sustainable production configurations and designs that reduce environmental footprint without compromising quality. This virtual space will be used for workforce training through gamification, cultivating new skills and fostering a new circular mindset. ENCIRCLE will follow a human-centered design and propose a symbiotic ecosystem of humans and AI through explainable Human-in-the-Loop methodologies. Building on the Digital Product Passport concept and product traceability via IoT and blockchain, ENCIRCLE will support circular business cases through a Digital Marketplace. On the producer’s side, a circular CRM, will enable companies to track their products and offer personalized, circular products and services. On the consumer’s side, a mobile app will empower users with sustainable consumption choices, expanding the lifespan or salvaging the remaining value of old products. ENCIRCLE will also explore the legal and ethical implications of its research, validating its research outcomes and hypotheses, through a series of demonstrators across the entire value chain.

Recycling aluminium from existing End of Life (EoL) and production scraps uses only 5% of energy compared to primary material production, making it mandatory for exploiting its global decarbonisation potential and meeting the demands of the European Green Deal. However, once aluminium is alloyed with other metals, it is virtually impossible to remove these elements again. Extensive mixing of different EoL alloys therefore inevitably leads to downcycling. This practice has been a successful strategy due to high demand for cast aluminium alloys in combustion engines, a universal recycling “sink” that will dry up in the coming years. Europe possesses a rich potential of secondary aluminium resources with an expected share of 49% of total aluminium production by 2050. The RecAL project (Recycling technologies for circular ALuminium) provides a balanced approach to fully exploit this valuable resource. It synergistically addresses all stages of circular production and tackles problems of the entire value chain: - Increase impurity tolerance in alloy design at level or superior performance - Exploit the benefits of digitization and robotic assistance in sorting and dismantling - Create recyclate streams with vastly enhanced purities - Adapt production paradigms to unfold the full potential of secondary resources - Harmonise communication between all sectors of the aluminium industry The project will mature an envelope of 14 crucial technological solutions towards these goals up to TRL6 and embed them into a digital, “socio-technical ecosystems”: the Aluminium HUB for circularity. This interactive platform will directly link stakeholders along the value chain for full scale industrial and technological symbiosis and circular economy closing energy, resource and data loops at regional and European scale.

Manual and automated production lines must evolve to “produce more and diverse with less”, however they need to address shortcomings such as - high product variants requiring tool level dexterity and resource level reconfigurability - lack of cognitive perception systems to allow autonomous reasoning and operation - absence of adaptable control to accurately handle a variety of workpieces and materials, and - inefficiency of planning systems in addressing holistically all hierarchical production levels. SMARTHANDLE will research technologies to address these needs and support European industry, by implementing a) intelligent, reconfigurable agents to provide dexterity in a range of handling applications, b) AI based reasoning enablers to optimize the flexibility potential of these agents and c) Higher-level planning and coordination mechanism to allow the successful and scalable deployment of such solutions in real life use cases. SMARTHANDLE is a research and innovation action (RIA) nevertheless, it acknowledges that such technologies can be meaningful only if they lead to solutions that address real life needs. Thus it has engaged 3 use cases from the consumer goods (MENICON-handling of deformable, delicate and high precision parts: contact lenses), Metal Industries (ALUMIL- packaging of large variable section materials: aluminum profiles) and automotive tier-1 suppliers (ABEE- disassembly of complex products: batteries) involving dexterous operations that are not possible to implement with the existing technologies. SSH aspects will be addressed, demonstrating benefits for workers by reducing their involvement in unsafe and unhealthy tasks, improving their working conditions when working in areas where the SMARTHANDLE reconfigurable solutions will operate.

Conventional Retrofitting (CR) can result in high energy use reductions at the expense of high installation costs and, usually, without being able to directly perform harvesting from Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Building Automation (BA) systems, as compared to CR, can result in medium energy use reductions and in low or medium harvesting from RES at the expense of medium installation costs and medium operational costs. Recently, the concept of Adaptable/Dynamic Building Envelopes (ADBE) - such as Multifunctional Façade Modules - has been proposed towards overcoming many of the shortcomings of CR and BA. ADBE systems can result in high energy use reductions and high harvesting from RES at the expense of medium-to-high installation costs and medium operational costs. The main strategic goal of the PLUG-N-HARVEST proposal is to design, develop, demonstrate and exploit a new modular, plug-n-play concept/product for ADBE - deployable to both residential and non-residential buildings - which is able to provide high (maximum possible) energy use reductions and high (maximum possible) energy harvesting from RES both at the single-building and the district scale while requiring medium-to-low installation costs and almost-zero operational costs. Moreover, by appropriately exploiting its attributes, the PLUG-N-HARVEST system will be designed and implemented considering circular economy principles, which will allow implementing new business models based on leasing and renting modes and, by this, leaving the door open to massive implementations. Four different multi-building Pilots – in Germany, Spain, Greece and the U.K. - will be used for demonstrating the use of the integrated PLUG-N-HARVEST system in full-scale, on a 24/7 basis and for a long period. The Pilots involve buildings with all different kinds of energetic, thermal and occupants' interactions, home occupants of highly diverse behaviour and background and include both residential and non-residential buildings.

FleFlex2Energy is a 48-month project with the ambitious goal to manufacture reliable Integrated Photovoltaics (IPVs) with differentiated product design, through the development of the first-of-each-kind Automated Roll-to-Roll (R2R) Manufacturing Line for Organic PVs. The F2E Manufacturing Line consists of the R2R Printing & Automated Assembly Machines, enhanced with robust metrologies for inline quality & process control under Artificial Intelligence (AI) analysis, implementing industry 4.0 concept. F2E IPVs will comply with all the standards, codes and product requirements of use in Buildings, Agriculture and Automotive sectors. The novel idea of Flex2Energy will be realized by 5 objectives: • Develop and upgrade manufacturing tools for design and aesthetics of OPV products, inline process quality control techniques and easily adaptable equipment design for printed PV technologies • Integrate tools, QC, equipment to Machines to build & demonstrate automated PL manufacturing of IPVs • Manufacturing high efficiency, durable printed IPV products at competitive cost • Demonstrate and Validate IPVs in energy efficient buildings, automotive and agriculture industries with minimum environmental and landscape impact • Deploy Market Strategy and Bridge the gap between PV and Building sectors F2E will implement innovative IPV products in three dedicated business cases to promote their early adoption and boost the new market demands. BIPV products will be installed on a public and a heavy industry building façade as energy efficient windows, while Agri-PVs will be installed on the roof of a Med GH working as a shade curtain system for growth of tomatoes and as energy generator making the GH energy autonomous. Finally, VIPVs will be installed on the roof of a commercial EV to increase mileage and also on the roof of a solar Carport to provide energy to electric vehicles. The IPV products will be evaluated in terms of performance, durability, social and industrial acceptance.