HARMONI aims at bringing together all the relevant stakeholders of the process industry to jointly identify, analyse and propose solutions to the regulatory bottlenecks and standardization needs that hamper their innovation processes and the market uptake of their results, necessary to move towards a more sustainable and competitive European process industry. In order to achieve HARMONI’s overarching goal, the consortium will develop and apply a methodology for ensuring an effective collaboration of the 8 sectors involved in SPIRE PPP to elaborate the solutions to the common challenges they face due to non-technological barriers, such as regulatory issues or the lack of European Standards when trying to improve their resource efficiency. In addition, HARMONI will analyse, compare and propose recommendations to trigger the transferability of technical solutions among and beyond the SPIRE sectors. The methodology will include the utilisation of the existing SPIRE Knowledge platform and the creation of another platform to be linked with CEN/CENELEC STAIR WG for the coordination of the project’s standardization activities. The project activities will result in an optimized EU regulatory and standardization framework that facilitates and supports innovation in the process industry; a better participation of the SPIRE community in the EU regulatory and procedures, thus providing the most adequate input to the regulatory authorities; an earlier and more active involvement of the SPIRE community in the EU standardization process; and an overall better environment to maximize transferability rates of technologies across SPIRE sectors. HARMONI consortium includes 3 SPIRE sectorial associations (chemicals, cement and equipment), A.SPIRE, 2 RTDs coming from two SPIRE sectors (steel, ceramic), 1 National Standardization body (DIN) and an experienced RTO to coordinate them (CIRCE). In addition, an Advisory Board will involve the other 5 SPIRE sectorial associations and CEN/CENELE

Europe is faced with the challenge of sustaining a secure supply of by-product metals, which play a fundamental role in the competitiveness of the manufacturing sector and innovations in high-tech sectors. To loosen the growth restrictions imposed by the inflexible supply from primary mining, alternative sources for these metals must be explored. At the same time a wealth of metals is entrapped within the vast amounts of secondary resources still being landfilled or used in applications where their intrinsic value is not fully utilized. To unlock the potential of these resources, a radically new approach to metal recovery must be deployed. Crucial factor within this new value chain is the zero-waste approach, which captures not only the contained metals but also valorises the residual matrix (often >95% of the bulk material). Such an approach requires the development of innovative, highly selective metal recovery technologies that fully capture the metal-value without impairing the properties of the residual matrix material for valorisation. CHROMIC aims to develop such new recovery processes for critical (Cr, Nb) and economically valuable (Mo, V) by-product metals from secondary resources, based on the smart integration of enhanced pre-treatment, selective alkaline leaching and highly selective metal recovery across the value chain. An overarching assessment of the related economic, environmental and health and safety aspects will be carried out in an iterative way to ensure that the developed technologies meet the requirements of the circular economy whilst being in line with current market demand. The technology will be developed for two models streams (stainless steel slags and ferrochrome slags) with the potential of replication to numerous industrial residues across Europe. Involvement of society from early on will smooth the path towards implementation, so that the CHROMIC processes can contribute to securing Europe’s supply of critical raw materials.

Each year the EU steel sector generates several million tons of metal and mineral containing residues that are currently largely under-exploited and are often sent to landfills with an enormous waste of resources that could replace virgin materials. ReMFra main objective is the development and validation of highly efficient pyrometallurgic melting and reduction demonstration plant at relevant industrial scale for recovering metals and minerals contained in a wide range of steelmaking residues. The ReMFra process will allow to valorise steelmaking residues, such as filter dust, scale, sludge and slags, to obtain pig iron, iron rich oxides, a highly concentrated zinc oxide and an inert slag. ReMFra comprises two main parts to be developed, improved and tested at industrial scale: Plasma Reactor and RecoDust. The first will be dedicated to recover the coarse residues (scale, sludge, slag), while the second will focus on fine-grained dusts. The project will allow the improvement of iron yield using recovered pig iron instead of new pig iron and replacing the iron ore with the iron rich oxide. The recovery of concentrated ZnO and inert slag as by-products will provide a significant source of income and will contribute to the overall carbon neutrality. To reach the full circularity, the process foresees the use, as reducing agent, of secondary carbon sources (i.e. waste plastics). Energy recovery solutions will also be integrated in the metal recovery process starting from enabling the use of molten pig iron. ReMFra consortium comprises: 5 steelmaking companies, 4 RTOs as technology providers with large experience in steel sector, 1 university and the European Steel Technology Platform. To conclude, ReMFra is expected not only to enable technological advances in the demonstrators involved but will also contribute to the development of new standards, training programmes, adaptation and certification of industrial processes thus facilitating the replication of the project.

Agriculture and food industry having a high dependence on resources in their production and striving for long-term sustainability. In this context there is an urgent need to optimise resource use and smooth the transition to a knowledgedriven agriculture. The NUTRIMAN is a Nitrogen and Phosphorus thematic network compiling knowledge “ready for practice” for such recovered product applications, practices and technologies, interconnecting applied science and industrial practice, for the user interest and benefits of the agricultural practitioners. There is an urgent need to spread knowledge and network information towards agricultural practitioners about the insufficiently exploited N/P recovery innovative research results (technologies, products, practices). The project objective is to improve the exploitation of the N/P nutrient management/recovery potential for the ready for practice cases not sufficiently known by practitioners. Our action will open new opportunities for farmers to develop connections between applied researches with practical usefulness results and farming practice in the priority area of nutrient management and nutrient recovery. Uses a bottom-up approach to identify incentives and bottlenecks for adoption and to prioritise between technologies/products and will ensure larger willingness to adopt innovations and improve multiplicator effects. Large scale take up of the recovered N/P innovative fertilisers targeted, produced from un-exploited resources of organic or secondary raw materials in line with the circular economy model, and economical/environmental efficiently used by farmers. Effective dissemination and exploitation promoted by multilingual web platform, other communications and best practice field demonstrations for farmers. This action is contributing to the successful deployment of the vast reservoir of existing scientific/practical knowledge on the N/P recovery theme, including multi lingual abstracts in EIP-AGRI format.