SCENARIOS will devise and demonstrate a comprehensive set of technological solutions to address the detection, (bio)monitoring, long-term toxicity, risk assessment, pollution control and remediation of Per- and polyFluoroAlkyl Substances (PFASs) as a test bed for zero pollution ambition from refractory and mobile organic chemicals. SCENARIOS's approach and technologies will be self-sustainable, (near) net-zero energy and will smoothly integrate in the circular economies of EU countries and worldwide. A harmonised composition of the project consortium encompassing renewed academic and research centers and competitive technological SMEs will ensure SCENARIOS? replication and impact and continental level and beyond. The project will fill the knowledge gap and deliver disruptive remediation TRL advancements for probably the most awkward and widespread toxic class of contaminants -PFAS- with unprecedented energetic balance and the near absence of external chemical additions promoting EU leadership in the sector and a significant advance in the research field. The industrial core of SCENARIOS will enable four demonstrations (case studies) within EU industries and a public health institution stepping forward a set of industrial and societal sectors where pollutant remediation and health surveillance have excellent potential for the Green Deal implementation.

Rail freight transportation is a system service where a multitude of players, participants and systems providers bear a high degree of responsibility for its attractiveness and performance. It shows high efficiency as transportation means, in terms of land use and energy consumption and low greenhouse gas emissions. However rail’s market share of freight transportation and its economic efficiency continues to be limited. Aimed at overcoming such uncertainty, this project addresses one of the most important key resources for further developing rail freight transportation: the optimization of the performance of the rail freight wagon. The continuous pressure on environmental issues and energy efficient transport is forcing the rail transportation sector to enhance the rail logistics services and to incorporate innovative solutions to improve load capacity to keep the “best-in-class” position and, therefore, acquiring a much privileged position beyond alternative terrestrial transport source, as truck transportation. Thus, aimed at optimizing rail freight transportation, the main objective of this project is to holistically address the aspects that may improve freight wagon performance: enhanced logistics, improved multimodal operative, higher load capacity, optimized filling/emptying time and flexibility to transport multi-products. This project aims to achieve such optimization by combining industrial expertise on the freight wagon design and construction, advanced materials for lightweight construction and logistics with the research capabilities to incorporate innovation solutions and optimize material performance.

Action on circularity is not taken when information and evidence is not available across the life cycle chain. The CircThread project's main objective is to unlock access to data now in silo’s, and enhancing it as decision information for actors across and outside the extended product life cycle. To do this CircThread will deliver a Circular Digital Thread methodology, a framework for facilitating information flow exchanges across the extended life cycle chain of Products, Components, their Materials and Chemicals data, and related Circularity, Environmental, Social and Economic Information. The core is to create data linkages between product chain, value chain, asset chain and life cycle chains based on a Product information Catalogue, and enable information exchanges via data contracts governed by secure and reliable management standards. The project will implement the system in Cloud Platforms in 3 demonstration clusters in Italy, Slovenia and Spain rolled-out across the entire extended life cycle chain of home appliances (incl. washing machines and dish washers) and home energy systems (incl. boilers, solar-PV systems and batteries) to test 7 circularity use cases and associated business models. The expected impact for the work programme is to enable improved decision taking accelerating Circularity and Carbon emissions reductions including: i) Enhanced life extensions of products by better understanding of in use failures and maintenance needs, ii) improved understanding of the quality of end-of-life products for spare parts buy-backs to support right to repair, iii) improved assessment of circularity routes by waste management and recycling companies by delivering enhanced product composition data, iv) improved materials and chemicals tracing of products and components for safer products and identifying Critical Raw Materials cycles, v) Empowering decisions by citizens and citizen organisations by providing direct access to product performance information.

The overarching aim of RE-WITCH is to deliver cost-competitive, game-changing solutions in the field of sustainable industrial cooling and heating. To do so, RE-WITCH will demonstrate advanced thermally-driven industrial cooling technologies based on ADsorption and ABsorption processes driven by an optimized mix of low-grade waste and renewable sources (innovative high vacuum flat plate solar collectors). Such solutions will be demonstrated in 4 demo sites encompassing food and beverage sectors as well as industrial sectors where heat-to-cold solutions are not yet widely explored (bio-refinery, pharmaceutical). The activity will be completed by studying the replicability of proposed technologies in replication sites even integrated with DHN. The project will be delivered by an industrial-driven consortium of 26 partners from 10 countries and it is composed by some of the most innovative SMEs, LEs and R&D centers in the field of industrial renewable H&C leveraging experience from industrial and EU-funded projects (HYCOOL, SO-WHAT, Indus3Es). The multi-disciplinary composition of the consortium ensures that all the challenges (technical and non-) will be addressed to ultimately bring RE-WITCH solutions to the market by 2029. Innovative open access modelling platforms and engineering solutions will be also developed to facilitate the design, upscale, replication and integration in industrial processes of the proposed technologies. Thanks to a stakeholders driven dissemination and communication campaign, RE-WITCH will ultimately demonstrate transformative technological solutions that unlock the combined potential of low-grade waste and renewable heat use in industries, hence also targeting integration of heat-to-cold technologies into relevant EU Policies.