BIOSAFIRE goes back to nature to upgrade lignins and tannins, nature’s flame retardants, and unlock them for industrial application of biosbased flame retardants. Starting from already existing pilot plants, BIOSAFIRE upscales and broadens the available feedstocks to provide flame retardant in powder formats for five applications in four different sectors: naval, railway, home appliances and wood coatings. Featuring the same fire retardancy performance as chosen toxic benchmarks and enhancing safety and sustainability with an 80% of biobased content, BIOSAFIRE aspires to not only demonstrate its targets on 5 use cases, but also to create a material portfolio and a set of processing guidelines to enhance flame retardants substitution by the industry. This will open the possibility for biobased resins to exhibit good fire retardant properties. It will unlock a market opportunity worth USD 9.5 billion in 2028where Europe involves a 25% share and the sectors involved in the project 65% of the market share. BIOSAFIRE will design an industrial pilot plant to understand and overcome value chain barriers and create a robust techno economic assessment to promote the market uptake of the project results. BIOSAFIRE is an opportunity to test the EU JRC SSbD framework. The project will use a tiered approach to run the framework iteratively and provide a decision support toolset, link SSbD principles to early conceptual design and ultimately provide a software tool based on HEU SUNRISE methodology. The integration of SSH in the project will allow an enhanced social acceptance, further boosted by the training materials developed during the project.

Successfully scaling up the sustainable and biodegradable materials is essential for the future growth of European industry. To compete with well-established fossil-based chemicals, biobased alternatives need to solve the triple equation of environmental, safe, economic and societal performance. At the same time it must be economically viable on an industrial scale and possess properties akin or superior to existing petroleum-derived analogues. Few biobased polymers have met this challenge. NEXT-STEP will build on the H2020 BioCatPolymers project to demonstrate a sustainable, safe and economically viable production process for a new chemical platform with large scale applications, notably in the bio-based polymer market. NEXT-STEP will use Harwdood sugars produced from sustainably managed forest at the flagship plant of the project partner Fibenol. NEXT-STEP has defined ambitious KPIs for its process regarding its economic performances as well as its Biomass and Energy efficiency. The new chemical platform, the 3-methyl-d-valerolactone (3MdVL) will improve the sustainability and recyclability of polyurethane (PU) products and unlock new engineering plastic applications for Polylactic acid (PLA) co-polymers. Together with its derivate 3-methyl 1,5-pentanediol (3MPD), the 3MdvL can also be used as a biobased polyol component in the traditional PU and other plastic production processes. NEXT-STEP will demonstrate the applicability of its chemical platform by demonstrating its use as a feedstock for the production of (i) Polylactic acid (PLA) co-polymers for shoe outsole, and of (ii) recyclable Non Isocyanate Polyurethane foams for shoe mid-sole and insulation materials applications. Five other applications will be selected for demonstration together with the polymer industry during the project.

PolyMethylMethAcrylate (PMMA) is a well-established polymer for its optical properties. Although PMMA can be turned back into its monomer, the technology has limited applications. Currently what is collected and reprocessed are mostly production scraps, which is about 10 % of the annual PMMA production but a much larger amount of recyclable product is available. On a world scale basis, 10 % of post-industrial scraps and the equivalent of 10 % of post-consumer products represent a potential of a Billion € market. The MMAtwo project main objective is to construct a novel and fast growing PMMA recycling value chain through depolymerization and recovery of a monomer grade sold at 90 % of virgin MMA price. MMAtwo targets to reduce the energy needs by more than 70 % and the CO2 emissions by more than 60 %. To achieve its objective, MMAtwo integrates representative players along the value chain. During the project, PMMA will be collected from production scraps, but also from End-of-Life vehicles, Electronics goods, construction…. The lead-free depolymerization process will be validated at TRL7 enabling the possibility of a first commercial unit soon after the end of the project. A versatile purification process will be validated through repolymerization of the produced monomer. MMA grades produced will be validated in several optical and non-optical applications. The inorganic fractions from PMMA composites will also be valorized. The project will establish standards for post-consumer and post-production PMMA based products in order to facilitate the recycling. Training and education activities will be organized in order to prepare the next generation of Engineers and Researchers in the field of closed-loop polymer recycling. The new value chain will benefit to the entire PMMA industry, as post-production and post-consumer products will be collected and processed by and independent company servicing the major PMMA producers and their customers.