Press releases

Freising – After three and a half years of intensive research, the EU project CIRCULAR FoodPack has developed new processes to effectively recycle flexible polyethylene food packaging, blazing the trail for a sustainable circular economy in this sector. The project partners have applied and validated a tracer-based sorting technology that can separate food and non-food packaging waste. A combination of novel pre- and post-treatments with mechanical or solvent-based recycling processes is used to remove printing inks, odours and other impurities from the food packaging waste. The resulting post-consumer recyclates fulfil the quality requirements for their further processing in new flexible packaging. They can be integrated in new home and personal care packaging and in future, together with a newly developed barrier concept, post-consumer recyclates may also be feasible in food packaging. The project was coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV, based in Freising. A total of 15 companies and research institutes were involved in the project. Funded by the European Union, CIRCULAR FoodPack received around 5.4 million euros from the Horizon 2020 framework programme.

Freising, Germany – Following five years of intense research, the Circular Flooring consortium has proven that it is possible to produce plasticiser-free PVC recyclates from end-of-life flexible floor coverings. The solvent-based recycling process, which is operated with CreaSolv® formulations¹ jointly developed by Fraunhofer IVV and CreaCycle, can efficiently remove critical legacy plasticisers from waste PVC flooring. The recovered PVC complies with EU REACH legislation and can therefore be used to produce new PVC flooring. The project thus supports the EU objective of establishing a European circular economy. In addition, the consortium has demonstrated the technical feasibility of the process on a pilot scale, paving the way for scaling up to commercial dimensions. The Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Freising, Germany, carried out the project together with ten companies and research facilities from five European countries. The European Union provided Circular Flooring with funding of around €5.4 million from its Horizon 2020 programme.

Landshut, Germany – Over three years of research, the consortium of the EU project HyFlow has successfully developed a highly efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective hybrid energy storage system (HESS) that can meet high energy and power demands. The researchers achieved this by combining a high-performance vanadium redox flow battery with a supercapacitor with water-based electrolytes. With one of the demonstrators developed in the HyFlow project, major energy consumers such as enterprises, municipal utility companies, medical facilities, and data centres can determine the optimal system dimensions for their individual requirements. Using their existing power usage data, the system computes the ideal storage solution in terms of capacity and output required. The HyFlow project has been realized by Landshut University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with nine further partners from six countries across Europe. The European Union has funded the project with around 4 million euros.

Munich/Trento (Italy) - One of the greatest challenges of the 21st century is the transition to climate-neutral energy sources. Here, reliable energy storage plays a key role, as production and load peaks in the electricity grid require flexible storage systems that can be used for a wide range of applications. The recently launched EU project SMHYLES aims to develop innovative, sustainable, and safe salt- and/or water-based hybrid energy storage systems. These combine two storage technologies and their respective advantages: long duration capacity and high power density. The new low-CRM (critical raw materials) systems will also contribute to Europe’s energy independence. The SMHYLES project, coordinated by the “Fondazione Bruno Kessler” (Italy), is funded by the EU under Horizon Europe with around €6 million for a period of four years from January 2024 on. The consortium includes 16 partners from seven countries.

Planegg (Germany) - The Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant has built the first large-scale commercial plant for the production of cellulosic ethanol based on its sunliquid® technology in Podari, in southwestern Romania, and commissioned it. The European Union supported the project with around 25 million euros as part of the LIGNOFLAG project. At today's final conference of LIGNOFLAG in Planegg, the project partners presented the results of six years of successful cooperation.

Zlín (Czech Republic)/Munich – New battery technologies that are affordable and sustainable over the entire life cycle are crucial to achieve the goals of the European Green Deal. As part of the EU project TwinVECTOR, the centre of excellence at the Tomas Bata University (TBU) in Zlín, Czech Republic, is to be expanded technically and institutionally with the support of the consortium partners to enable multidisciplinary national and international project teams to network, create synergies and work together on the further development of battery energy storage technologies. The EU is supporting the recently launched project with EUR 1.3 million over a period of three years. Five partners from the Czech Republic, Germany, Finland and Austria are participating in the project coordinated by the Tomas Bata University.

Munich/Bologna (Italy) - The potential of intelligent, AI-controlled robots that "give a helping hand" to people in hospitals, care facilities for the elderly and children, factories, restaurants, the service industry and households is enormous. However, an intelligent and interactive robot can only be effective if it can react flexibly to different environments and situations. It therefore needs to be able to learn – and this presents an attainable challenge for researchers and developers. The EU-funded research and innovation project IntelliMan aims to develop such intelligent and learning robots. Thirteen partners from six countries are working together on the project, coordinated by the Università di Bologna (Italy). The EU is supporting the project with EUR 4.5 million under the European framework programme for research and innovation, "Horizon Europe".

Munich, Germany – In many industrial sectors, such as in the automotive industry, in aerospace or in the energy sector, the demand for special metal components that are light and have a high strength is increasing. Modern gas turbines, for example, require extremely stable and at the same time lightweight heat shields. An important manufacturing process for this is the powder-bed fusion process of metals using laser beam (PBF-LB/M). Depending on the application, the process is not yet always competitive compared with conventional production in terms of unit costs. The research and innovation project InShaPe, funded by the EU with EUR 6.8 million, aims to make a decisive contribution to the further development of the technology. Under the coordination of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), here the Professorship of Laser-based Additive Manufacturing, ten partners from seven countries are working together on the project.

• After construction completion in October 2021, the plant underwent a thorough commissioning process and has successfully started  production
• The offtake of the entire production has been contracted to global energy company Shell for several years
• The flagship plant will process approx. 250,000 tons of straw to produce approx. 50,000 tons of cellulosic ethanol per annum
• The production start at this first sunliquid^® cellulosic ethanol plant proves the commercial viability of Clariant’s innovative technology and with that supports the licensing business strategy

Freising, Germany – CIRCULAR FoodPack aims to facilitate the circular use of plastic packaging addressing the most sensitive product category: Food. The food packaging sector constitutes of 87%¹ of all European flexible plastic multilayer-composites. Such composites are used to fulfil the high requirements for food preservation and safety. Since such material combinations are inseparable, the multi-layer composites cannot be recycled into high-quality materials by state of the art recycling technologies, which counteracts the intentions of a circular use. Instead, most multi-material composites go to landfill or energy recovery. Furthermore, the reuse of recyclates in food packaging applications is clearly restricted by EU legislation². The potential presence of undesired substances in the recyclates hence requires appropriate methods of decontaminations. Therefore, CIRCULAR FoodPack will further develop the Tracer-Based-Sorting systems to separate food from non-food packaging, enhance mechanical and physical recycling processes and eco-design innovative mono-material food and personal care packaging that will be easy to sort and to recycle.