ECOBULK through a large scale demonstration effort will contribute to “closing the loop” of composite products in the automotive, furniture and building sectors by promoting greater re-use, upgrade, refurbishment and recycle of products, parts, and materials. It will bring opportunities for both the environment and the economy by offering business opportunities along the entire new defined supply and value chains. ECOBULK approach will be based on identifying and promoting commonalities in processes, technologies, products and services ensuring replicability and transferability to other industrial sectors. The ambitious application of the circular economy model in the three selected sectors is justified by the high numbers of synergies, in terms of the design (design for modularity, design for disassembly/dismantling), materials (fibre and particle reinforced plastic composites), manufacturing technology (moulding, extrusion, hot pressing, thermobonding) and business models (leasing, renting, PSS, fix-it shops, etc.). The methodology will embrace and focus on large scale demonstration activities in 7 countries and more than 15 demonstrators to address the key components of the circular economy solutions; rethinking product design to shift towards a Design Circular Framework, validation of material and product manufacturing technologies to ensure technical and economic feasibility, new reverse logistics for the recovery of products and parts from consumers or users and into the supply chain, implementation of Innovative business models exploring C2C, B2C and B2B opportunities, and dissemination to raise awareness and knowledge sharing activities on circular economy solutions. Finally, an end-user and Stakeholder platform linking end users with relevant actors from the early design stages will foster second life, reuse and recycle of product and parts as well as material recovery for reintroduction into a circular production chain.

Coil coating is an important industrial process applied in a major part of industrial steel and metal alloy production and associated with big facilities and large primary energy consumption. A major part of the overall plant size and the energy demand of coil coating facilities is associated with the drying/curing process that occur inside a curing oven, which is the bottleneck concerning the increase of the production capacity. In this drying/curing process, organic solvents are vaporized from the applied liquid coating film and since they are flammable, the usually applied curing ovens with convective air drying technology have to be operated far below the Low Explosive Limit (LEL), due to safety constraints. ECCO proposes a novel solution for the curing oven operation, which can not only drastically increase the compactness and energetic efficiency of the system, but leads to an increased production flexibility due to a fuel-flexible, modular and potentially energetically self-sustainable process. The main idea is to heat the metal strip by IR-radiation and operate the curing oven well above the Upper Explosive Limit (UEL), thus, performing the drying and curing process in an atmosphere mainly consisting of the solvent vapours, which are used as fuel in IR radiant porous burners. This solution leads to a size/ production capacity ratio reduction of 70% and a reduction of investment and operating costs of at least 40% each. Starting from previous activities at TRL 4, an interdisciplinary approach is foreseen, based on advanced-materials, combustion technology and prediction tools for system design/optimization, with active participation of key industrial stakeholders, to bring this technology to TRL 6 and realize a prototype furnace at industrially relevant size and environment.