The PLATIRUS project aims at reducing the European deficit of Platinum Group Metals (PGMs), by upscaling to industrial relevant levels a novel cost-efficient and miniaturised PGMs recovery and raw material production process. The targeted secondary raw materials will be autocatalysts, electronic waste (WEEE) and tailings and slags from nickel and copper smelters, opening-up an important range of alternative sources of these critical raw materials, with the potential to substitute a large amount of primary raw materials which are becoming more and more scarce in Europe. For the first time five of the major research centres in Europe will collaborate in developing and fine tuning the most advanced recovery processes for PGMs. This joint effort will lead to a unique exchange of know-how and best practices between researchers all over Europe, aiming at the selection of the recycling process and the preparation of the Blueprint Process Design that will set the basis for a new PGM supply chain in the EU. Two primary and secondary material producers with a consolidated business model will carry out validation of the innovative recovery processes in an industrially relevant environment by installing and testing them in an industrially relevant environment and benchmarking with the currently adopted recovery processes. A recycling company will provide a link to market introduction by manufacturing autocatalysts with second-life PGMs obtained via the PLATIRUS technology. Two large automotive companies will validate the material produced through the new recovery process, and ensure end-user industry driven value chains for recovered PGM materials. LCA, economic and environment assessment of the whole process will be led by a specialized consultancy company. Finally, the PLATIRUS project will be linked to European and extra-European relevant stakeholders, research activities and industries, with a solid dissemination, communication and exploitation plan.

The CROCODILE project will showcase innovative metallurgical systems based on advanced pyro-, hydro-, bio-, iono- and electrometallurgy technologies for the recovery of cobalt and the production of cobalt metal and upstream products from a wide variety of secondary and primary European resources. CROCODILE will demonstrate the synergetic approaches and the integration of the innovative metallurgical systems within existing recovery processes of cobalt from primary and secondary sources at different locations in Europe, to enhance their efficiency, improve their economic and environmental values, and will provide a zero-waste strategy for important waste streams rich in cobalt such as batteries. Additionally, CROCODILE will produce a first of a kind economically and environmentally viable mobile commercial metallurgical system based on advanced hydrometallurgical and electrochemical technologies able to produce cobalt metal from black mass containing cobalt from different sources of waste streams such as spent batteries and catalysts. The new established value chain in this project will bring together for the first time major players who have the potential of supplying 10,000 ton of cobalt annually in the mid-term range from European resources, corresponding to about 65% of the current overall EU industrial demand. Therefore, the project will reduce drastically the very high supply risk of cobalt for Europe, provide SMEs with novel business opportunities, and consolidate the business of large refineries with economically and environmentally friendly technologies and decouple their business from currently unstable supply of feedstocks.