The objective of the SPOTVIEW project is to develop and demonstrate innovative, sustainable and efficient processes and technology components, in order to optimize the use of natural resources, especially water, in three industrial sectors (Dairy, Pulp and Paper and Steel) contributing to 44% of industrial water usage in EU. This resource optimization (including water, energy, raw materials and additives) is a key issue to maintain production competitiveness and sustainability. A total of 14 existing and new technologies will be assessed during the project, including solid/liquid separation, ultrafiltration, deionization, biological treatment, disinfection and chemical heat pump. The technology components will be assessed in simulated or operational environment for 9 new water management practices in the three industrial sectors. Up to 7 selected technologies demonstrators are planned in real industrial environment. The implemented process and technology will be evaluated in terms of environmental impacts and benefits, generated by achieving the SPOTVIEW targets (20% to 90% reduction of water usage, wastewater emissions, chemicals and energy use). The SPOTVIEW consortium covers the whole value chain, from technology development, assessment, supply and industrial applications in each targeted sector. Economic exploitation of the proposed technologies is pursued through a well described business case scenario and market penetration strategy. The market opportunities for future services and technology products beyond the SPOTVIEW project will generate up to 2800 new equipment and 7000 new jobs in Europe. The expected gains for the industrial sectors generated by the recovery of by-products and by energy, chemicals and additives savings represent annually 1.53b€ for Europe. The generated production capacity increase by companies has been estimated at 22.8b€. Dissemination and training activities are planned to maximize the impact of the project.

Europe has an extensive textile waste problem - annually 7 –7.5 million tons of textile waste is generated, but only about 30 - 35 % of the generated waste is collected separately and less than 1% is recycled into new clothing. Collection of textile waste will become mandatory in EU member states by 2025. Most of the textile are cotton, polyester, or their blends. Considerable amounts of CO/PES blends are disposed every year due to the technical challenge and/or economic viability of recycling. The objective of PESCO-UP is to develop a sustainable and economically and technologically viable process of the mixed CO/PES textile waste to be upcycled into cotton originated and polyester products. The processes should enable for production of new products without quality restriction and of products with identical properties and performances as those produced using primary resources. The main tools to achieve this are the development of automated identification and sorting methods for textiles, Digital Product Passport with a marketplace-style dataspace for sharing data describing material streams to support matching of supply and demand of textile materials, and the process development of purification, separation technologies as well as the technologies that utilize the separated cotton and PES fractions for the valuable products. PESCO-UP will ensure that sustainable fiber-to-fiber recycling becomes a reality in Europe. This will turn a societal waste problem into a business opportunity for European SMEs and bring the textile industry back to Europe. At the same time dependency on oil and cotton based raw materials will decrease, which will mean reduction in CO2 emission and reduced water consumption. The use of developed digital methods and digital product passport can be widened in other industrial sectors to solve their recycling and sustainability issues.

Black Liquor to Fuel (BL2F) process produces drop-in biofuels for aviation and shipping from black liquor, a side stream of chemical pulping industry. 83 % CO2 reduction compared to fossil fuels, and competitive production cost of 0.90 €/l for drop-in sustainable aviation fuel are received. A large deployment, using a variety of biomass, can yield >50 billion liters of advanced biofuels by 2050, then satisfying the EU demand for advanced biofuels for aviation (15 Mtoe) and shipping (30 Mtoe). First-of-a-kind Integrated Hydro Thermal Liquefaction (IHTL) process at pulp mills produces fuel intermediate for further upgrading in oil refineries. Biomass is converted to low oxygen content (85 %. Integrated hydrothermal HydroDeOxygenation (IHDO) will further upgrade HTL-oil to fuel intermediate (< 5 w-% O2), classifying as bunker-like marine fuel or feedstock for high-quality aviation and marine fuels production. The process innovations of BL2F are: 1) combined salt separation and HTL-reactor, enabling direct upgrading of HTL-oil, 2) reforming of the aqueous phase to hydrogen, decreasing the need for external fossil hydrogen in IHDO, 3) integrating the process to pulp mill, offering cost reductions in treating of the gaseous and solid side streams by existing process installations. The BL2F is supported by CEPI, Avinor, and Rolls Royce and covers the whole value chain: The 6th largest producer in the world of bleached eucalyptus kraft pulp NVG, the leading biorefinery supplier Valmet, catalyst developer Ranido and Neste, the world’s largest producer of renewable diesel collaborate with excellent research partners; VTT, PSI, SINTEF, Tampere University, KIT, Brunel University London. LGI and industrial partners maximize the impact of the project. The ambitious goals and strong consortium strengthens European leadership in renewable biofuels and climate protection.

Medium- to large-scale bioenergy utilisation for electricity and combined industrial or district heating is predicted to increase by 160% in 2020 compared to 2010, while carbon emission quotas are becoming stricter. Finding new ways to efficiently utilise cheap and currently unused feedstocks are necessary in order to meet these challenges. Within the project Biofficiency we will investigate how to handle ash-related problems in order to increase steam temperatures up to 600°C in biomass-based CHP plants, including pulverised fuel and fluidised bed systems. The major aspects are fly ash formation, the use of additives, and pre-treatment technologies for difficult fuels. This leads to highly reduced emissions, in particular CO2 and fine particulates, as well as a secure and sustainable energy production. Biofficiency gathers a unique consortium of excellent academic facilities and industrial partners, providing an exceptional platform for the development of new, highly-efficient CHP plants in order to significantly expand their potential in the fast-growing field of renewable energies. By sharing our collective experience, we will strengthen European bio-energy technologies and help solving global climate and energy challenges. The project approach addresses current bottlenecks in solid biomass combustion, namely enhanced deposit formation, corrosion and ash utilisation by a variety of new, promising technologies. Our goal is to deepen the understanding of fly ash formation, to improve current biomass pre-treatment technologies, as well as to contribute to the field of biomass ash utilisation. Through our strong collaboration with industry and academic partners, we want to pave the way for highly-efficient, low-emitting biomass CHP plants, capable of firing low-grade fuels. This benefits industry, communal partners and public authorities by providing sustainable heat and electricity at significantly decreased emissions.

Thanks to the development and implementation of several innovative technologies which focus strongly on the efficient use of energy, water and chemicals, a ubiquitous complex multi-material product, the fresh meat packaging consumed by the millions every day, will be thoroughly redesigned to make it fully biobased, smart and recyclable at conventional paper recycling mills. To achieve such remarkable goal, every intermediate product contained in that complex product, i.e., the tray, the barrier coating, the absorbing pad and the transparent film, will be made almost exclusively of wood constituents (fibres, micro-nanofibres, lignin and sugars, which have been chemically or enzymatically modified) and integrated with two food-quality sensors (rotting and cold-chain). Finally, several innovations will be brought to the existing recycling stages, both oriented to increase the overall efficiency of the process: incorporation of specific identification markers to allow precise sorting of the bio-contaminated products, advanced oxidation treatments to both sanitize and decrease energy consumption of the process and chemo-enzymatic revalorization of the recalcitrant fractions.