HARARE will demonstrate sustainable pathways to produce metals using hydrogen as an enabler, for removing waste and valorising materials in carbon free processes. The consortium’s concern and thus the drive to build this initiative, starts with an industry that is key contributor to a sustainable future: the metallurgical sector. The switch to renewable energies requires vast amounts of metals, such as steel and aluminium for solar panels and wind turbines, and copper for bolstering the electricity grid necessary for transport and industry. However, the metallurgical industry amounted to 70 million tons direct CO2 emitted in 2017. Moreover, carbon-based processes make the European metallurgical industry dependent on imports. Using hydrogen as a reductant to substitute carbon is one of the few ways metallurgical industry can potentially become truly free of CO2-emissions, utilizing raw materials that can be produced in Europe. HARARE’s vision is to tackle these challenges and become part of the solution, making the metallurgical industry more sustainable by presenting a circular concept that is based on a two-fold reasoning: 1) Recover wastes with hydrogen. choosing two representative wastes from the copper and aluminium production processes, namely: flash smelter slag from primary copper production and Bauxite residue (BR) from aluminium production. 2) Hydrogen-based processes will allow for an environmentally friendly metal industry while decreasing dependence from hard coal imports and being cost competitive. HARARE will thus eliminate waste from the metallurgical industry while recovering valuable materials, and increasing the use of hydrogen in the industry, thereby increasing its circularity, the utilization of raw materials and the profitability, lessening the negative side-effects on the community, and making steps toward the less carbon-dependent metallurgical industry necessary for a sustainable future.

Specific raw materials become increasingly important to manufacture high level industrial products. Especially electronic equipment contains precious metals and a series of strategic raw materials. To date the material specific recycling is focused on mass stream concepts such as shredder processes and metallurgy to extract the high-value metallic constituents, i.e. copper, gold, silver. However, a series of critical elements cannot be recovered efficiently or is even lost in dust or residual fractions. The goal of ADIR is to demonstrate the feasibility of a key technology for next generation urban mining. An automated disassembly of electronic equipment will be worked out to separate and recover valuable materials. The concept is based on image processing, robotic handling, pulsed power technology, 3D laser measurement, real-time laser material identification (to detect materials), laser processing (to access components, to selectively unsolder these; to cut off parts of a printed circuit board), and automatic separation into different sorting fractions. A machine concept will be worked out being capable to selectively disassemble printed circuit boards and mobile phones with short cycle times to gain sorting fractions containing high amounts of valuable materials. Examples are those materials with high economic importance and significant supply risk such as tantalum, rare earth elements, germanium, cobalt, palladium, gallium and tungsten. A demonstrator will be developed and evaluated in field tests at a recycling company. The obtained sorting fractions will be studied with respect to their further processing and recovery potential for raw materials. Refining companies will define requirements and test the processing of sorting fractions with specific material enrichments. An advisory board will be established incorporating three telecommunication enterprises.

Phy2Climate will validate 5 phytoremediation pilots in Spain (South Europe), Serbia (Balkan region), Lithuania (Baltic region), Argentina (South America) and India (South Asia) at TRL-5. The selected contaminated sites represent the most common soil contaminants worldwide. The phytoremediation pilots will produce energy crops with none indirect Land Use Change (iLUC) issues. The energy crops will feed a pilot biorefinery in Germany that combines cutting edge biomass processing technologies to produce 4 types of clean drop-in biofuels for the road and shipping transport sectors at TRL-5: EN 14214 biodiesel, ISO 8217 marine fuels, EN 590 diesel and EN 228 gasoline. Additionally, bio-coke will be also produced as substitution of petroleum coke in the metallurgical industry. A significant cost reduction in factor >5 for phytoremediation compared with common remediation techniques is target together with conversion costs of drop-in biofuel production <0,45 €/l. The global biofuel production potential of the Phy2Climate approach is estimated up to 137 million m3 per year. Furthermore, estimated specific Greenhouse Gas (GHG) mitigation of the produced drop-in biofuels is 149% compared with the fossil equivalents, resulting in a total saving potential of 500 Mega-tones CO2eq per year. The work programme is divided in 7 work packages that are specifically designed to achieve the objectives of the project as well as to contribute to the Mission Innovation Challenge 4 and to 16 UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Phy2Climate consortium unites 17 partners from 10 different countries with strong interdisciplinary expertise in the fields of project management, soil remediation & phytoremediation, advanced biofuel technologies, environmental and social sustainability, legal analysis, business development and communication &dissemination. Additionally 11 stakeholders from 8 countries and at EU level have already expressed their interest in the project by a letter of support.

The overall objective is to minimise the leakage of materials from the linear economy and work towards a circular economy. Specific objectives are to: • Engage cities, enterprises, citizens and academia in 16 participatory value chain based partnerships to create and develop eco-innovative solutions together. • Develop 10 viable end-markets by demonstrating new applications for plastic waste, metals (EEE devices), biowaste and wood waste. • Develop a governance model for cities based on value chain based partnerships. • Develop decision support tools and assess the actual impact by use of Big Data. • Ensure replication through the FORCE Academy aiming at enterprises, citizens and policy makers. The eco-innovative solutions will be demonstrated across four cities (Copenhagen, Hamburg, Lisbon and Genoa) and using the four materials: Flexible plastics: Recycling and upgrade of 5,000 tonnes of flexible plastic from enterprises and private households will enable virgin material substitution, corresponding to preventing emissions of 12,500 tonnes of CO2. Metals: Citizens will be mobilised to reclaim an additional 2 kg/capita of WEEE (app. 3,600 tonnes). A communication campaign will reach 100,000 citizens and support at least five SME’s that repair damaged EEE devices so that 10-20% of the collected WEEE can be redistributed. Wood waste: additional 12,000 tonnes wood waste from urban and mountain areas will be collected. 8-10,000 tonnes of brushwood will be used for compost production, and 14-16,000 tonnes will be processed into wood particles. Biowaste: around 7,000 tonnes of biowaste from the municipal mixed waste stream will be recovered: 3,000 tonnes coming from restaurants and hotels, and 4,000 tonnes coming from households. The partnerships will result in the creation of viable eco-innovative market solutions, exploited by the partners. Replication in other cities will be incentivised thus ensuring competitiveness of European Circular Economy and green growth.