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  • ABOUT US
    • Identity card
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    • History
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    • EU operations
  • RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
    • Research projects
      • International projects
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      • The Program Group
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    • International links
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  • AREAS OF EXPERTISE
    • Buildings
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    • Dams
    • Roads
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    • Cableway installations
    • Transmission and other towers
    • Tunnels and underground structures
    • Natural disasters and other kinds of emergencies
  • CERTIFICATES AND APPROVALS
    • Certification Service
    • Issued Environmental Product Declarations
    • Service for Technical Assessment and Approvals
    • Issued certificates
    • Issued Technical Approvals
  • ORGANIZATIONAL UNITS
    • The Department of Materials
    • The Department of Building Physics
    • Department for Research of Fire-safe Sustainable Built Environment
    • The Department of Structures
    • The Department of Geotechnics and Infrastructure
    • The Laboratory for Metrology
    • ZAG’s Library
    • Administrative Services Sector
ZAG – Zavod za gradbeništvo LogoZAG – Zavod za gradbeništvo Logo

ENG / SLO

  • ABOUT US
    • Identity card
    • Company presentation
    • Contacts
    • History
    • Catalogue of Public Information
    • EU operations
  • RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
    • Research projects
      • International projects
      • National projects
      • The Program Group
      • The Infrastructure Group
    • International links
    • Operation InnoRenew CoE
    • Equipment list
  • AREAS OF EXPERTISE
    • Buildings
    • Bridges
    • Dams
    • Roads
    • Railways
    • Cableway installations
    • Transmission and other towers
    • Tunnels and underground structures
    • Natural disasters and other kinds of emergencies
  • CERTIFICATES AND APPROVALS
    • Certification Service
    • Issued Environmental Product Declarations
    • Service for Technical Assessment and Approvals
    • Issued certificates
    • Issued Technical Approvals
  • ORGANIZATIONAL UNITS
    • The Department of Materials
    • The Department of Building Physics
    • Department for Research of Fire-safe Sustainable Built Environment
    • The Department of Structures
    • The Department of Geotechnics and Infrastructure
    • The Laboratory for Metrology
    • ZAG’s Library
    • Administrative Services Sector
International projectsZavod za gradbeništvo2022-09-22T16:21:53+02:00
Home/RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT/Research projects/International projects
TITLE LINK DESCRIPTION PROGRAM CONTACT FROM TO LOGO INFORMATION
Assessment and Rehabilitation of Central European Highway Structures ARCHES www.arches.fehrl.org Aljoša Šajna 01.09.2006 31.08.2009
Central European Research in Transport Infrastructure CERTAIN http://certain.fehrl.org Aleš Žnidarič 01.06.2006 31.05.2010
Cultural Heritage Protection against Flood CHEF http://www.chef.bam.de/en/ Mateja Golež 01.02.2007 31.01.2010
Coordination and Implementation of Road Research in Europe ERA NET ROAD http://www.eranetroad.org/ Bojan Leben 01.06.2005 31.03.2009
Fundamental understanding of cementitious material for improved chemical physical aesthetic performance NANOCEM http://www.nanocem.org/ Franc Švegl 01.03.2006 30.04.2011
Sustainable Pavements for European New Member States SPENS http://spens.fehrl.org Mojca Ravnikar Turk 01.09.2006 31.08.2009
Bridge Safety Monitoring BRIDGEMON http://bridgemon.zag.si/ Aleš Žnidarič 01.12.2012 30.11.2014
Cost-effective and sustainable Bio-Renewable Indoor Materials with high potential for xustomisation and creative design in Energy Efficient buildings BRIMEE http://www.brimee.eu/ Sabina Jordan 01.07.2013 30.06.2017
Resource-and Cost-effectice integration of renewables in existing high-rise buildings COST-EFFECTIVE http://www.cost-effective-renewables.eu/ Sabina Jordan 01.10.2008 30.09.2012
Developing a European Transport Research Alliance DETRA http://detra.fehrl.org Aleš Žnidarič 01.06.2010 30.09.2012
Dismantling and Recycling Vehicle Tyres and road Materials into Roads – Sharing Knowledge and Practice DIRECT-MAT http://direct-mat.fehrl.org Karmen Fifer Bizjak 01.01.2009 31.12.2011
ERA-NET ROAD II ENR2 http://www.eranetroad.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83&Itemid=62 Bojan Leben 01.05.2009 30.04.2011
Geo-clustering to deploy the potential of Energy efficient Buildings across EU GE2O http://www.geocluster.eu/ Friderik Knez 01.01.2012 31.12.2013
Gas Absorption Heat Pump solution for existing residential buildings HEAT4U http://www.heat4u.eu/en/ Friderik Knez 01.11.2011 31.10.2014
Protection Of Cultural Heritage Objects With Multifunctional Advanced Materials HEROMAT http://www.heromat.com/ Andrijana Sever Škapin 01.12.2011 30.11.2015
PoroElastic Road Surface: an innovation to Avoid Damages to the Environment PERSUADE http://persuade.fehrl.org Darko Kokot 01.09.2009 31.08.2015
End of life strategies of asphalt pavements RE-ROAD http://re-road.fehrl.org Marjan Tušar 01.01.2009 31.12.2012
ROlling resistance, Skid resistance, ANd Noise Emission measurement standards for road surfaces ROSANNE http://rosanne.megakaz.com/ Darko Kokot 01.11.2013 31.10.2016
Smart Maintenance and Analysis of Transport Infrastructure SmartRail http://smartrail.fehrl.org Stanislav Lenart 01.09.2011 31.08.2014
Transport Research Arena 2008 TRA2008 http://tra2008.fehrl.org/ Aleš Žnidarič 01.09.2007 31.08.2008
Supporting the Transport Research Arena 2012 conference TRA2012 Aleš Žnidarič 01.01.2011 31.12.2012
Understanding TRANSport for Concrete which is Eco friendly iNnovative and Durable Transcend http://www.nanocem.org/index.php?id=282 Vilma Ducman 01.10.2010 30.09.2014
Tyre and Road Surface Optimisation for Skid TYROSAFE http://tyrosafe.fehrl.org Darko Kokot 01.07.2008 30.06.2010
Design Tools for high grip surfaces ULTRAGRIP http://www.ultragrip.eu Vilma Ducman 30.09.2009 30.09.2012
Tomorrows Road Infrastructure Monitoring and Managem TRIMM http://trimm.fehrl.org Aleš Žnidarič 01.12.2011 30.11.2014
Young European Arena of Research 2010 YEAR 2010 http://year2010.fehrl.org/ Bojan Leben 01.01.2009 31.08.2010
Young European Arena of Research YEAR 2008 http://year.fehrl.org/ Bojan Leben 01.10.2007 31.07.2008
Nanoremediation of water from small waste water treatment plants and reuse of water and solid remains for local needs RusaLCA http://www.rusalca.si Ana Mladenović 01.07.2013 31.12.2016
Promotion of the Recycling of Industrial Waste and Building Rubble for the Construction Industry REBIRTH http://www.re-birth.eu Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.10.2011 31.12.2014
Oblikovanje čezmejne platforme storitev za izboljšanje procesov širšega področja gradbenih objektov PROFILI http://www.profili-ita-slo.eu Marjan Japelj 01.11.2011 01.04.2014
Modern Art Conservation Center MACC Mateja Golež 18.08.2011 18.08.2014
Enhance mechanical properties of timber, engineered wood products and timber structures COST Action FP1004 http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/fps/Actions/FP1004 30.05.2010 30.05.2011
Assessment, Reinforcement and Monitoring of Timber Structures COST Action FP1101 http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/fps/Actions/FP1101 Tomaž Pazlar 29.06.2010 29.06.2011
Integrated Fire Engineering and Response IFER COST Action TU0904 http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/tud/Actions/TU0904 27.05.2011 25.05.2012
Impact of climate change on engineered slopes for infrastructure COST Action TU1202 http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/tud/Actions/TU1202 There is an urgent need to assess the risks posed by climate change on our already ageing infrastructure and to plan adaptations that both increase safety and reduce the cost of repairs. Engineered slopes (cuttings, embankments, flood defences) are a critical component of this infrastructure. Many of these slopes are now exhibiting excess deformation, which are threatening the serviceability of the infrastructure and dwellings nearby and causing delays and subsequent economic loss to European industry and the general public, while posing a safety hazard. The aim of the Action is to build a coalition of researchers equipped to address the challenges of engineered slope infrastructure resilience and adaptation to climate change. This group will develop collective understanding, share techniques, facilities and data, and work jointly in disseminating results across the EU and to asset owners. Ultimately, the Action will enable infrastructure asset owners to make evidence based investment and adaptation decisions to improve resilience and safety. COST Stanislav Lenart 04.10.2012 03.10.2016
People Friendly Cities in a Data Rich World COST Action TU1207 http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/tud/Actions/TU1204 12.04.2013 11.04.2017
NORM for Building materials NORM4BUILDING COST Action TU1301 http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/tud/Actions/TU1301 Vilma Ducman 19.09.2013 18.09.2017
Quality Control for Wood and Wood Products COST E53 http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/fps/Actions/E53 Jelena Srpčič 01.03.2006 31.05.2010
PHONASUM - Photocatalytic Technologies and Novel Nanosurfaces Materials – Critical Issues COST MPNS Action 540 http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/mpns/Actions/540 01.01.2007 01.01.2010
Soundscape of European Cities and Landscape COST TUD Action TD0804 http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/tud/Actions/TD0804 Mihael Ramšak 30.11.2012
Integrating and Harmonizing Sound Insulation Aspects in Sustainable Urban Housing Construction COST TUD Action TU0901 Mihael Ramšak 03.11.2009 02.11.2013
Multifunctional layers for the protection of mineral substrates, E! MULTI-PROTECT http://www.eurekanetwork.org/project/-/id/5861 Andrijana Sever Škapin 01.11.2010 31.10.2013
Development Of Lightweight Aggregate From Waste Material And Further Processing Into Thermal Insulation Concrete E!4964 LIGHT-WASTE http://www.eurekanetwork.org/project/-/id/4964 Vilma Ducman 01.07.2010 01.09.2012
Polymer subconstruction for curtain walls E!6782 POLYBAR http://www.eurekanetwork.org/project/-/id/6782 Franc Capuder 19.06.2012 15.10.2013
Development Of Self-Cleaning Clay Roofing Tiles - CLEANTILE EUREKA E! 3969 http://www.eurekanetwork.org/project/-/id/3969 Vilma Ducman 01.01.2007 30.06.2009
Fire resistance concrete made with slag from steel industry - FIRECON EUREKA E! 4166 http://www.eurekanetwork.org/project/-/id/4166 Vilma Ducman 02.01.2009 31.12.2011
B-IMPACT http://www.b-impact.cloud/ Tadeja Kosec 01.03.2015 28.02.2017
Effective asset managemnet meeting future challenges ASCAM http://www.conferencemanager.dk/assetmanagement/the-event.html Mojca Ravnikar Turk 01.09.2010 28.02.2012
Environmental indicators for the Total Road infrastructure Assets EVITA http://www.eranetroad.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=98&Itemid=53 Darko Kokot 01.09.2010 31.08.2012
Modelling Infrastructure influence of RoAd Vehicle Energy Consumption MIRAVEC http://www.eranetroad.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=111:2011-energy&catid=31:standard&Itemid=46#MIRAVEC Darko Kokot 01.11.2011 31.10.2013
Models for rolling resistance In Road Infrastructure Asset Management Systems MIRIAM http://miriam-co2.net/ 01.01.2010 31.12.2016
Pilot project for common EU Curriculum for road safety experts: training and application on secondary roads Pilot4Safety http://pilot4safety.fehrl.org/ Matej Michelizza 01.06.2010 31.05.2012
Durable Pothole Repairs POTHOLE http://www.eranetroad.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110:2011-design&catid=31:standard&Itemid=46#POTHOLE Aleksander Ipavec 01.10.2011 01.09.2013
Scoring Traffic At Roadworks STARS http://www.eranetroad.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110:2011-design&catid=31:standard&Itemid=46#STARs Mojca Ravnikar Turk 01.10.2011 31.03.2013
Selection of Appropriate Vehicle Restraint Systems SAVeRS http://www.saversproject.com/ Bine Pengal
Baselining Road Works Safety on European Roads BRoWSER http://www.traconference.eu/papers/pdfs/TRA2014_Fom_28164.pdf Mojca Ravnikar Turk 01.02.2013 01.10.2015
Risk AssEssment of AGEing Infrastructure RE-GEN Aleš Žnidarič 01.04.2014 31.03.2016
Safety at the Heart of Road Design ENR-SRO1 http://www.eranetroad.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=54&Itemid=53 15.09.2009 15.09.2011
HI-SPEQ - High-speed survey specification, explanation and quality Darko Kokot 14.04.2014 13.04.2016
FUNDBITS Marjan Tušar 01.04.2014 01.04.2015
A tool to assess the impact of construction process quality on the performance of pavements and its implementation in tenders COSISTEND Mojca Ravnikar Turk 14.04.2014 13.04.2016
REthinking Future Infrastructure NETworks - REFINET Bojan Leben 01.05.2015 30.04.2017
InnoRenew CoE - Renewable materials and healthy environments research and innovation centre of excellence http://innorenew.eu/sl/o-projektu H2020 Friderik Knez 01.06.2017 31.05.2022
Decision Support Tool for Rail Infrastructure Managers - DESTinationRAIL www.destinationrail.eu Horizon 2020 Stanislav Lenart 01.05.2015 30.04.2018
Forever Open infrastructure across X all transport modes http://www.useitandfoxprojects.eu H2020 Karmen Fifer Bizjak 01.05.2015 30.10.2018
NUGENIA-PLUS— Preparing NUGENIA for HORIZON2020 http://www.nugenia.org/ H2020 Bojan Zajec 01.05.2015 31.10.2016
Building Green Skills http://www.bugsproject.eu/ EC:Employment policies Friderik Knez 01.12.2014 31.05.2016
Risk based approaches for Asset inteGrity multimodal Transport Infrastructure ManagEment H2020 Stanislav Lenart 01.09.2016 31.08.2019
AM4INFRA - Common Framework for a European Life Cycle based Asset Management Approach for transport infrastructure networks https://am4infra.eu/ Horizon 2020 Darko Kokot 01.09.2016 31.08.2018
InnoWEE - Innovative pre-fabricated components including different waste construction materials reducing building energy and minimising environmental impacts http://innowee.eu/ H2020 Vilma Ducman 01.10.2016 30.09.2020
Q-Air; Sustainable Prefabricated Glass Façade with Performance Exceeding State-of-the-art Glass Façades Sustainable Prefabricated Glass Façade with Performance Exceeding State-of-the-art Glass Façades H2020 Katja Malovrh Rebec 01.01.2017 31.12.2018
PAPERCHAIN - New market niches for the Pulp and Paper Industry waste based on circular economy approaches https://paperchain.eu/ H2020 Karmen Fifer Bizjak 01.06.2017 01.06.2021
Mitigating Environmentally Assissted Cracking Through Optimisation of Surface Condition Environmentally-Assisted cracking (EAC) is one of the major failure modes occurring in light water reactors (LWRs). The condition of surfaces exposed to the primary coolant plays a main role on the susceptibility of components to EAC. However, many national and international guidelines and standards do not address surface condition of critical components in nuclear power plants (NPP). The goal of the MEACTOS project is to improve the safety and reliability of Generation II and III of NPP by improving the resistance of critical locations, including welds, to EAC through the application of optimized surface machining and improved surface treatments. MEACTOS is proposed by a consortium of 16 partners from 11 EU member countries (Spain, France, Finland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Germany, Slovakia, Romania, UK, The Netherlands and Slovenia) plus Switzerland (associated country of Euratom), that comprises all the appropriate key players to ensure the availability of technologies, capabilities, technical and operational knowledge required for the goal of the project. Research laboratories (VTT, SCK-CEN, CVR, CIEMAT, PSI, JRC, RATEN), universities (UNIMAN, STUBA) nuclear components suppliers (NAMRC, ENSA, SA.),utilities (EdF), engineering companies (ZAG, AMEC) and plant designers (AREVA-NP) has been selected in order to complete the required capacities to cover all the expertise fields faced by the project. The Consortium members have differential but complementary skills and expertise in areas such as project management, manufacturing, technology transfer or dissemination, to name a few key areas.   Pro-active material degradation programs outside Europe, particularly in Japan and in the United States, currently address, or plan to address, surface condition with respect to EAC. This European MEACTOS project will directly benefit Europe, engaging on an equal footing with these initiatives, maintaining a level of competitiveness for European industry in the global scenario.   H2020 Bojan Zajec 01.09.2017 31.08.2021
RETRACKING, Towards the Circular Economy: traceability of Fibre-Reinforced Composites FRC artefacts www.eu-skladi.si Interreg Slovenija Italija Alenka Mauko Pranjić 25.09.2017 24.12.2019
URBAN SOIL 4 FOOD - Establishment of Innovative Urban Soil Based Economy Circles to Increase Local Food Self-sufficiency and Minimize Environmental Footprint http://www.uia-initiative.eu/en/uia-cities/maribor Maribor is the second largest City in Slovenia with 111.500 inhabitants and spreads across 147,5 km². It is also the capital of Podravje region. Cities such as Maribor are at the heart of Europe`s economy, but are heavily dependable on outside resources to meet their demand for energy, water, food and to accommodate waste and emissions. Self-sufficiency in Slovenia is low, soil is disappearing, quality of nutrients in the food is lowering and young population has lost knowledge and motivation for healthy eating. Also, in the world economy, where multinational companies are taking Control of seed production, leading to local seed to die out, it is extremely important to use traditional and local seeds. Therefore, the main goal of the project is to use the City’s waste to produce and valorise new products and food using an innovative process to produce urban soil, with the aim to increase local food self-sufficiency and minimise the environmental footprint of the City of Maribor.   UIA Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.12.2017 30.11.2020
EnDurCrete - New Environmental friendly and Durable conCrete integrating industrial by-products and hybrid systems, for civil, industrial and offshore applications The main goal of Endurcrete Project is to develop a new cost-effective sustainable reinforced concrete for long lasting and added value applications. The concept is based on the integration of novel low-clinker cement including high-value industrial by-products, new nano and micro technologies and hybrid systems ensuring enhanced durability of sustainable concrete structures with high mechanical properties, self-healing and self-monitoring capacities. Among key technologies there are: nano-enabled smart corrosion inhibitors, self-sensing carbon-based nanofillers, multifunctional coatings with self-healing properties and sensorised non-metallic reinforcement systems. Innovative design concepts will be developed for smart installation, disassembly and re-use of the new green pre-cast and cast in place elements aiming at enabling easy recycling and re-using approaches. The functionality of the developed concrete structures will be proved under severe operating conditions supported by experimental and numerical tools to better understand factors affecting durability and capture the multiscale evolution of damage as well as to enable service life prediction. Demonstrators will be tested in working sites of tunnels, ports and offshore structures, in order to prove the enhanced durability (+40%, i.e. +30 years) and decreased cost (-35%) of the new concrete systems in such critical applications. Innovation aspects such standardization, life cycle assessments, health and safety and training activities will be performed. Finally, in order to maximize the exploitation of findings and ensure dissemination and impacts beyond the project duration, business models and plans for the proposed solutions will be developed. The Consortium, led by HeidelbergCement and involving 15 partners (5 SMEs), will have a strong economic and social impact (1billion € and 6900 high quality jobs by 2025), considering concrete markets and related applications.   H2020 Andraž Legat 01.01.2018 30.06.2021
FLOW - Lightweight alkali activated composite foams based on secondary raw materials http://flow.zag.si New possibilities for the recycling of inorganic wastes or industrial residues are investigated in order to avoid the disposal of waste materials in landfills. Especially, aluminate- and silicate-containing materials can be utilized in alkali activation technology; when treated with an alkaline activator solution these precursors form a solid material at room temperature which could be used to replace concrete, ceramic and some other industrial materials. Additionally, significant environmental advantages are achievable by replacing the production of these
energy-intensive materials by more sustainable processes.
The main objective of this project is to develop new lightweight alkali activated foams based on secondary raw materials (e.g. fly ash, slags). To obtain highly porous structures, properly selected foaming agents and foam stabilizing agents need to be included in the basic compositions. Currently, the main disadvantage of such lightweight materials is their high fragility. Addition of fibers will be used to overcome this drawback and help to produce materials with more elastic nature. By incorporating organic fibers from a bio-based renewable source, and simultaneously using inorganic secondary resources as raw materials for alkali activated foams, a high performance in terms of ergy efficiency and environmental impact will be reached. The developed materials will have applications in wide range of thermal and acoustic insulating products.
The project will be performed by institutions already highly experienced in the field of alkali activation technology (Slovenian national Building and Civil Engineering Institute, Fiber and Particle Engineering Unit at University of Oulu, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia). Complementary knowledge possessed by the project partners guarantee the successful execution of the project. In addition to research partners, several industrial companies will participate in the project as potential exploitation partners.
 
ERA-MIN2 Vilma Ducman 01.05.2018 30.04.2021
Cinderela – New Circular Economy Business Models for More Sustainable Urban Construction https://www.cinderela.eu/ Horizon 2020 Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.06.2018 31.05.2021
Phenomenological modelling of steel corrosion in concretes for service life prediction https://www.arrs.gov.si/sl/index.asp Many of the facilities and structures involved in the nuclear industry use reinforced concrete (RC). The cooling tower, containment buildings of nuclear-power-plant (NPP), radioactive waste repositories and containers are mainly constituted of RC parts. RC is used for support, containment, and also to isolate radioactivity from the living environment. All of these structures are required to be safe, functional and reliable with minimum maintenance in varying environments (temperature, relative humidity, CO2, pressure, etc.) for several hundred years. In short-term atmospheric conditions, concrete is considered to be a durable material, but during long-term operation, a change in the chemical environment around reinforcement is inevitable.  Corrosion of reinforcement in concrete is therefore recognised as one of the jeopardising phenomena of the radioactive waste disposal structures.
 
In order to be able to predict the long-term behaviour of metals in cementitious materials involved in radioactive waste disposal, a phenomenological model is required, taking into account formation of thicker corrosion layer, transport of products from the steel surface, studying behaviour of the matrix and special characteristics of corrosion process.
 
The overall aim of the project is to propose and evaluate a phenomenological model to the whole propagation process of carbonation-induced corrosion of metals in different cementitious materials, used in the context of NPP operation and waste containers formulation. Identified lacking or inconsistent information will be obtained through experimental program, encompassing microstructural, physical and micromechanical analysis of different phases of corrosion process. The experimental programme is based on both (long-term) characterisation on old concrete structures, and on (short-term) laboratory experiments on concrete with different chemistry and microstructure exposed to accelerated degradation.
 
CEA team has developed a comprehensive model that incorporates all interconnected and consequential phases of steel corrosion processes in concrete. On the other hand, ZAG team has upgraded specific corrosion monitoring techniques that enable to measure very low corrosion rates in shorter time intervals. It is believed, that combination of these two approaches and methods will help to upgrade and evaluate the corrosion model.
 
SRA - Slovenian Research Agency Andraž Legat 01.06.2017 31.05.2019
Ustanovitev novega čezmejnega LivingLab centra za raziskave in simulacije požarnega odziva kompozitnih materialov med in po požaru Errichtung eines neuen grenzübergreifenden LivingLabs für die Untersuchung und Simulation des Brandverhaltens von Kompositmaterialien während und nach dem Brand http://fireexpert.info The main goal of the project is building an expert and innovation center for civil engineering industry and for industry of building
materials which will operate in the field of fire safety according to ‘Living Laboratory’ principles (LivingLab, LL). The main output of
the project is a written document, which describes organization of the center and its activities. The center will offer advanced
experimental (fire tests) and numerical investigations (simulations) for the adaption and optimization of fire behaviour of products
during the phase of their design and development. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the investment in their own
equipment and personnel for such research is generally too high. Thus, a danger exists that that their innovative ideas could not
be realized within the framework of the EU fire performance regulations. In addition to offering advanced research support to
companies in the process of development of new products, the use of advanced engineering methods for assessment of fire
evolution and fire spread will be also offered. In this way the center will also meet the needs of target groups in the field of fire
fighting, insurance, etc.
With the establishment of the new LL center, the project FIREEXPERT contributes to the overall challenge of the program area,
where strengthening in the areas of research, technological development, competitiveness and innovation should be achieved
through cross-border synergic cooperation of relevant development actors (companies, research centers and universities ...). The
center will consist of partners who already have experience in the relevant fields. Since partners on both sides of the border
complement each other, which represents significant added value, the goals can not be achieved without a cross-border
cooperation.
Important links:
www.eu-skladi.si
http://www.si-at.eu/si2
http://fireexpert.info
Interreg SI-AT Friderik Knez 01.05.2018 31.10.2020
Aktivno ohranjanje in vrednotenje naravne in kulturne dediščine rudnikov in rudarstva za razvoj trajnostnega turizma / Aktivna zaštita I valorizacija prirodne I kulturne baštine rudnika i rudarstva za razvoj održivog turizma Mateja Golež 01.09.2018 28.02.2021
NC-0002 SOLAR ENERGY HARVESTING via PHOTOCATALYTIC WATER SPLITTING AND/OR CO2 REDUCTION BY CO-CATALYSTS https://www.arrs.gov.si/sl/index.asp The world is striving to shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. Solar light is an abundant source of energy, daily giving out 500 times the energy consumed by humanity. Sunlight can be transformed into chemical energy by employing photocatalytic reduction of
CO2 into highly energetic hydrocarbon molecules and water splitting into hydrogen and oxygen. The suggested bilateral group from the three research institutes (CEA, ZAG, NIC) has plentiful experience in the field of photocatalysis and solar energy capture. Additionally,
they possess complementary research equipment for characterization of developed materials as well as methods for evaluating material application. Within the proposed project we intend to synthesize new materials for light harvesting and capturing solar energy into highly energetic molecules such as hydrogen and hydrocarbons. We will do that by synthesizing novel hybrid materials on the basis of photocatalytic TiO2 to which we will deposit various cocatalysts (Pt, Pd, Cu, Ag, NiO, IrO2, RuO2) in order to improve its properties. We will focus on enhancing the activity of the new material and its selectivity to synthesize desired products. The materials will be characterized by XRD, FE-SEM, TEM, FTIR, UV-Vis spectroscopy, gas adsorption (BET), and zeta potential. CO2 reduction will be done in an enclosed, illuminated reactor system and the products will be analysed by GC-MS and HPLC. Hydrogen evolution will be tested in three electrodes electrochemical cell and illuminated by a mercury-xenon lamp. We will monitor material degradation after a selected
number of operation cycles. We will observe particle corrosion by employing the IL-SEM and IL-TEM methods. Additionally, dissolution of cocatalysts will be monitored by ICP-MS, capable of detecting concentrations in ppb range. The goal of the proposed project is to strengthen international cooperation between project partners, to acquire new knowledge of the processes that take place on hybrid materials and to research the possibility of synergistic effects between TiO2 as a base photocatalyst and deposited cocatalysts. One of the results will be common application of project partners to EU calls.
SRA - Slovenian Research Agency Andrijana Sever Škapin 01.05.2018 30.04.2020
BusiSource. Waste from companies as a secondary source http://busisource.tudelft.nl/ The project objective is to compile different methods to improve collection of WEEE from household waste, under different circumstances in the EU and spread this information throughout the target audience; businesses, other organisations concerning (WEEE) and Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) production.
The dissemination of the information is set within raising awareness at large towards the (secondary) raw materials sector. The dissemination of the information is by workshops. These workshops will be tested during the dissemination, and business models of giving these workshops will be tested. The target end-customers and key beneficiaries of this educational activity are on one side the businesses who can remove obsolete EEE and WEEE at lower cost or more income, and on the other side the recycling, remanufacturing and repair businesses who need more (W)EEE as an input. The major contribution to the target audience is lowering the collection costs (municipals) and organise more input for processing (recycling, remanufacturing and repair). The scope of the project is to compile different methods to improve collection WEEE from businesses and spread this information to the target audience. The key deliverables are a website with an overview of these methods for separate EEE/WEEE collection in businesses, workshops for at least 200 companies and a document on best practices how to give these workshops and a business model for these workshops for the KIC-LE. The website will also be a platform for businesses to connect with each other to exchange EEE/WEEE, and to benchmark with other businesses. The main impact is to lower the costs of WEEE disposal for businesses, increase the amount of WEEE for recycling and EEE for repair and remanufacturing companies.
 
EIT Raw Materials Ana Mladenović 01.04.2017 31.01.2020
DIM ESEE. Dubrovnik International ESEE Mining school https://dim-esee.eu/ Several equally important overall goals are presented below:
1. Educational activity is addressing the topics of the primary interest of the RM community: zero waste management and deep intelligent mining, both representing the strategic pillars of the KIC RM Eastern CLC, followed by small mining sites and recycling being of high regional importance.
2. Educational activity is creating a new collaborative network between 7 HEI and a research institute form 8 ESEE countries, contributing to unique multidisciplinary education programme and overall synergic inter-institutional collaboration, building and de-siloing of the ESEE KIC community. Overall number of academic staff form collaborating institution exceed 500.
3. Educational activity has already identified 8 ESEE active mining regions of high economic importance and will attract minimum 100 industrial partners (mining and recycling companies; SME and large companies) within 4 years establishing communication, identifying a specific industrial needs, creating new partnerships and contributing to overall KIC community building.
4. DIM ESEE partners come from two sides of the knowledge triangle: academia and research, however, critical tailoring of the DIM program will be done with industrial partners. Also, final users are industrial partners holding a third side of the knowledge triangle.
5. The project is geographically focused on ESEE Region but also captures the aspect of internationalization because countries like Serbia and Ukraine are involved.6. DIM ESEE school will educate minimum 160 professionals, academicians and PhD students within 4 years, according to tailor-made topics: zero waste management; deep intelligent mining, small mining sites and recycling, potentially increasing a number of new demonstration and pilot plants/prototypes, start-ups or new (urban) mines operating in Europe.
7. DIM ESEE school will also serve as an ideas centre/hub within the ESEE partner network increasing a number of successful matches in industrial symbiosis and potential new KIC projects, being a part of the ESEE Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS).
8. Through communication with wider society (web-pages with information at 9 different languages) increase public awareness on environmental aspects of mining and circular economy as one of the main focus of RM community and increase public acceptance of overall mining activities.
 
EIT Raw Materials Ana Mladenović 01.04.2017 01.04.2021
EXTREME. Substitution of CRMs in components and coatings used under extreme conditions http://www.network-extreme.eu/ EXTREME is a network based on laboratories, advanced equipment, demo and pilot plants, owned by partners with high skills and expertise on the substitution/reduction of critical raw materials used under challenging conditions of temperature, wear, friction, loading, corrosion, etc., that are interesting for industries and enterprises in the manufacturing, machining, transport, construction sectors, etc. The main objectives of the network are:
•             the development of new shared actions focused at the substitution and efficient use of critical raw materials used under extreme conditions;
•             providing services (e.g. modeling of alternative materials, development of bulk and coating materials and related process optimization, characterization and functional testing of materials, recovery and recycling of materials, training of professionals and researchers, etc.) to enterprises, industries and research institutions in the interested sectors;
•             supporting related education activities.
 
EIT Raw Materials Tadeja Kosec 15.03.2016 31.12.2018
FLAME. FLy Ash to valuable MinErals https://flame.vito.be The FLAME project is perfectly aligned with the KIC Raw Materials vision of turning the raw materials dependence into a strategic strength for the European economy. The DPS technology can become key in increasing resource efficiency by enabling dry (ultra)fine mineral classification and extraction of valuable minerals from both primary and secondary resources. This will contribute to closing material loops by minimizing losses of unused materials along the value chain. At large, the project results may trigger alternative applications of the DPS technology to other resource streams and thus benefit the wider KIC community active in (machine manufacturing for) resource extraction. The provision of large amounts of high-quality (ultra)fine minerals to the market is expected to engender the development of more performant, durable and sustainable materials and products in related markets such as high-value construction materials and composite materials. As an example, the use of high-performance concrete enables to extend structure lifetime from 50 to 500 years and to “dematerialize” buildings, requiring less resources for more performance. Also new manufacturing technologies (e.g. vacuum mixing, 3D printing) will strongly benefit from a larger and diversified supply of high-quality fines. The contributed KCA clearly show the complementary expertise of the project partners in mineral processing and application technologies.Given the large replication potential in- and outside Europe for a customer-base that is largely situated outside the KIC (Power companies), a successful industrial implementation of the DPS technology holds potential to create (very) large impact worldwide. Given that R&D; and machine manufacturing facilities will be located in the EU (i.e. Belgium and Lithuania, resp.), the project will definitely strengthen the EU competitiveness and innovation capacity in the machinery and equipment manufacturing sector – regarded as a major strength of Europe and Focus market of the KIC.Within the project, intense knowledge exchange between mineral end-users, power central customers and machine builders will enable de-siloing of expertise, sharing of expertise and further build-up of competences of skilled R&D; and technical personnel. In addition, student internships and engagement of engineering master students (MSc theses) will be organized, eventually these training/education activities aim at providing a recruitment base for the commercialising partner. EIT Raw Materials Ana Mladenović 01.04.2017 31.03.2020
MIN-PET. Mineral products from Petrit-T sidestream technology https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/min-pet/ Petrit-T is a high quality industrial by product from sponge iron manufacturing with little current utilization. In this upscaling project, its use as an inorganic binder raw material will be scaled up to yield geopolymer-based materials. This ceramic-like material has multiple uses in many applications including concrete elements, foamed concrete, thermal insulation material, and as a low temperature ceramic. Alkali-activation (also called loosely geopolymerization) involves alkali-activation of the precursor material in ambient temperature, and results in a ceramic-like structure with typically better mechanical properties than products in the market. This is achieved at room temperature processing, by employing machinery already available for ceramic and concrete, and results in very little investment and environmental footprint for the final products. Side-stream-based geopolymers have been commercialized using conventional industrial wastes, such as coal fly ash and blast furnace slag; by the successful commercialization of the Petrit-T foam geopolymer, up to 20 000 tonnes of side stream can be used in Höganäs alone, for producing environmentally friendly geopolymer materials. The market applications developed here are acoustic panels with up to 80 M€ sales potential, and sustainable concrete. The consortium covers the whole value chain from the producer to the end users, complemented with research institutions. Despite the simple manufacturing process of geopolymer materials, careful science and engineering is required in designing the reactions. TRL of the proposed method is currently 4, however the development is expected to be rapid and technical feasibility study during WP0 is designed to bring the technology to TRL 5, after which will be a gate review to assess if the technology is indeed ready to be up scaled. After the gate review, two processes (geopolymerization and hydration) will be up scaled for two Petrit-T based products: acoustic panels and concrete blocks.
 
https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/min-pet/ Vilma Ducman 01.01.2016 31.12.2018
OREVAL. experts and facilities for ore characterisation Objective
Provide easy access to world class facilities for Raw Materials characterization. Trigger new research development in the field of Raw Materials characterization. Facilitate new characterization technologies transfer and adoption.
The solution (technology)
The OREVAL manager, act as a single point of contact who has experience in experimental development and the integration of different characterization techniques. She can help the industry professionals to assess innovative ideas or to identify the right partner to provide from the proof of concept to the prototyping of innovative technologies.
In latter stage, the OREVAL manager helps the industry partners to submit ‘up-scaling’ project in order to fund technology transfer.
 
EIT Raw Materials Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.01.2018 31.12.2018
RECOVER. Innovation in Motion: Red mud and Copper slag Valorisation in Engineered Products https://recover.technology/ The general objective of this Upscaling project is to produce full scale final inorganic polymer products, from Metallo copper slag and Aughinish red mud, at the respective companies’ sites, using a modular and mobile upscaling unit. The generated products need to deliver properties similar to or better than traditional market substitutes and will be evaluated in terms of properties (i.e. leaching, durability, fire resistance…), to allow for their market uptake within 3 years after the project. Next to realizing the target of TRL 7 by the completion of the project, the on-site production of final products at Metallo and Aughinish plants and the related matchmaking events will contribute to the level of customer readiness by demonstrating its feasibility to local construction companies and policymakers, thereby providing a nucleus for industrial symbiosis.The utilization of Fe-rich semi-vitreous industrial residues as precursors for engineered fire-resistant and porous materials that can enter the European construction materials market will lead to products with lower environmental footprint and renders the metallurgical industries important raw materials suppliers that run integrated zero-waste processes. This valorization of secondary resources in construction materials will yield a positive environmental impact by substantially lowering CO2 emissions (reducing cement production, responsible for over 8% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions) and by avoiding the need for landfilling and the related environmental burden.The modular and mobile unit that is used to produce products on-site of the residue producer, allows to reach out to (traditional) construction industry and have them witness the transformation of residues to products in first person. This allows them to make a fact-based judgement about the extent to which their existing installations can be used to make these products or which adaptations and investments may be necessary. After the project, the unit can be used to train their employees and have them acquire new skills.The matchmaking events set-up at each of the involved residue producers, will showcase the innovation to construction industry, but also to policy-makers and possible the wider public. This will be a trigger to find regional partners for industrial symbiosis. Because the pilot unit is mobile, the approach can easily be applied to other companies and other regions. Like this, a domino effect can be initiated in which increasingly more residue producers (in first instance copper slag and red mud, but later also other residue types) will start to look for valorization opportunities to get more value out of their slag. Considering the size of the construction market, the relative share of secondary resources will remain relatively limited. Therefore, and because the residues will be typically processed regionally, usual competitors may find a common ground to cooperate in the field of residue valorization and commercialization.
 
EIT Raw Materials Vilma Ducman 01.04.2017 31.03.2020
ResiduFlex. Infrastructure and technology network on residue valorisation https://residuflex-eit.eu/ The ResiduFlex Network is part of a more comprehensive ZeroWaste umbrella network targeting the extraction of valuables from low grade, complex wastes and ores, while upcycling the residues to added value products. ResiduFlex takes a key position and addresses this conversion of the mineral matrix, i.e. the major volumetric fraction, to (construction) materials, by making a broad variety of valorisation technologies more easily accessible throughout Europe and by offering a more diverse range of solutions compared to what partners may achieve separately (e.g. substitution of cement with by-products, carbonated products, inorganic (alkali activated) polymers, upgraded soil…). This service will be offered in first instance in the partner countries and involved CLCs, targeting both the owners/producers of residues, as well as the producers of solution materials (e.g. construction industry). Also technology providers and developers, as well as the partners in the network will profit by increasing their knowledge and their portfolio of projects, partners and clients. ResiduFlex estimates to prepare its first service offerings to external customers by mid-2016. In this year the central contact point (Network Manager) will coordinate the mapping of the relevant infrastructure and expertise within the Network, and of the legislative barriers in the related countries. All partners will be involved through a team of Technology leaders and local contact points. In the second year, this mapping exercise will be broadened to all KIC partners to identify opportunities to strengthen the Network. In the meantime, the scope of the provided services will be extended and a decision structure will be set up to channel requests through the network in consultation with the customer. As a consequence, it is expected that the amount of clients will increase drastically during 2017 and 2018, leveraging impact by contributing to industry savings and increased competitivity by improved environmental and social sustainability and by reduced landfilled and stockpiled waste. This broad customer base forms the basis for the first steps to financial sustainability and the integration of the different nodes in the ZeroWaste network at the end of 2018. EIT Raw Materials Vilma Ducman 01.01.2016 31.12.2018
STORM. Industrial Symbiosis for the Sustainable Management of Raw Materials https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/storm/ Within the frame of the European Initiative on Raw Materials, the Project objective is to implement a long-term self-sustainable excellence network dedicated to provide services to external customers for the implementation of innovative, sustainable business and cooperation model solutions for the all-around recycling and/or exploitation of raw materials from end of life complex products with more attention for secondary products. The STORM Network will provide a unique opportunity for trainees and SMEs to access a coordinated group of excellent expertise in the eco-innovation field. Moreover, the purpose of the network is to support innovative companies and to facilitate the exploitation of European secondary resources via new forms of collaboration.
Drawing on the lessons learnt during numerous case studies on industrial symbiosis in Europe and in other parts of the world, the project will provide (and optimize where necessary) tools to support companies that are interested in implementing practical measures, which are aligned with the concepts of industrial symbiosis and the circular economy. The concept of these strategies is that cost reduction, added value, reduced environmental impacts and new business opportunities can derive from a process of cooperation also in a Europe-wide context, which, if self-sustained over time, will be beneficial for all partners involved. The Network coordinated approach will ensure also the addressing of energy efficiency issues, the minimization of environmental impact and the economic sustainability. Moreover, the project will offer guidance to local and regional authorities when planning new industrial parks or revitalizing existing areas and it will help to achieve a higher level of resource efficiency and greater harmonization of national waste strategies.
 
EIT Raw Materials Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.01.2016 31.12.2018
VirtualMine https://sites.google.com/view/virtualmine/home The main goal of the project VirtualMine is to increase the awareness among local community about the importance of raw materials and its possible use for better development of the European regions.
Furthermore, the project is to popularize mining among the general public, especially children and students who start to develop their path career, as well as to show the importance of the minerals in our modern world. The main stress should be put on creating conditions to convey knowledge on raw material as key to the development of the circular knowledge-based economy in the most effective way. The results of the project will be easily implemented in different locations across the Europe with the help of the RM KIC CLCs.
The scope of the project is to prepare the 3D visualization of the copper mining exploration process with the view of the copper value chain and awareness of the benefits of closing material loops. Copper is taken as the model, which could be replaced with other metals.
The project implementation plan is divided into three parts:
1)            “demo” teleportation to virtual world
2)            exhibition (display with real exhibits using multimedia with applications)
3)            workshops (classes in the laboratory for target audience: groups of pupils – primary school, secondary group 7-12-16 and 19-24 students of universities)
 
EIT Raw Materials Mateja Golež 01.04.2017 31.03.2019
Visual3D. Visualisation of 3D–4D models in exploration and geosciences http://www.visual3d.info/ While the territory of the EU in many parts shows a very high exploration potential and many EU countries obtain high rankings in the Fraser Institute annual reports on attractiveness (Fraser Institute, 2015) it is still a fact that a mere 4% of global expenditure in exploration is invested within European countries. One tool to trigger a higher degree of investment in exploration and to secure ultimately the domestic supply of both main commodities and critical raw materials (CRM) is to enhance our understanding of the Earth’s crust below the surface—and the major aspect is here to optimised our understanding about the 3rd dimension in geology. By integrating industry, academia and research institutes with expertise and excellence in exploration and 3D modelling it is the ambition of the network of infrastructure to increase the understanding of geological bodies in 3D and 4D through improved visualisation techniques. The vast majority of European mining companies are working in 3D for mine planning, re-source estimations and production. For this purpose a wide range of expert programs is uti-lized such as Leapfrog, Vulcan, Surpac, gOcad, MOVE and many others. This leads to a wide range of 3D-models with very differing character as well as various types of data and file for-mats. Especially the combination of models on different scales, such as the incorporation of deposit scale models into regional scales models, often includes over-simplifications and may lead to the loss of data, respectively. Therefore, a network that improves the interchangeability of models and furthermore enables full data integration will decrease the need for over-simplifications and consequently increase the usability of geomodels in exploration and research. One further benefit of some of the software packages is the possibility to dynamically generate alternative solutions to the geological problems, which are evident in cases where the data coverage is sparse, and the model uncertainties are con-sequently high to start with. The alternative solutions should be based on geologically valid hypotheses, and testing their applicability should at the least rule out geologically unreasona-ble alternatives.One other major problem is output and communication of the produced geomodels. The cur-rent communication of geomodels often requires specific expert software in order to make different data formats readable. This limits the group of possible co-workers in a modelling project and the group of people that can utilize such models to the amount of available – and often expensive – licenses. A network of 3D-modelling users can substantially widen up the possibilities to make geomodels accessible to a wider audience.Software packages for computer aided modelling (CAM) for geology and for industry standard mineral resource and reserve models are very complex. Furthermore there is a wide bunch of CAM software available. Each package has its individual functions, advantages and disadvantages. Often a person is skilled in application one or two different software packages. Hence software and applicant can be seen as a unit. Changing software or personnel needs investment in additional training and causes downtimes. To set up work flows for data interoperability could minimize expenditures on software and training for M&E; companies. Hence the results of such a network could maximize the benefit of the work related to modelling, interpretation and engineering and improve the time and cost efficiency of these processes.The visualisation tools available at the partners will support better targeting of new mineral resources at depth, and new technologies optimized for deep exploration in diverse terrains will enhance the efficiency of exploration by reducing environmental impacts and costs. This expected outcome will also re-shape exploration practices on low-grade and deep-seated mineral resources. The distribution and commercialization of the project´s outcomes among stakeholders of the extractive industry will improve competitiveness of European exploration and mining. Testing the results of the project in mineral belts with different geological, environmental and societal challenges of exploration will also support the generalization of know-how and technologies and their potential transfer outside of Europe.A large number of partners at all CLCs in EIT Raw Materials have decided to promote activities related to exploration for primary raw materials under the umbrella Lighthouse Exploration. The intention is to explore synergies and integration between different types of KAVAs related to the theme and in this way to maximize the outcome and KPIs for this important theme. The concept will be developed further during the construction phase of EIT Raw Materials. EIT Raw Materials Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.04.2017 01.04.2020
INNOMAT. Innovation Management through integration of LCA Training Packages https://eitrawmaterials.eu/course/innomat/ KIC-RM offers companies solutions to their risks with Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) in their products, however many companies are not aware of any risks. They are interested in Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), but these are laborious or expensive. Innomat offers with a course for companies an affordable insight in LCA’s and CRM-risks, and methods on how to be more resource resilient. Many methods are from the KIC-RM community, which makes this KAVA a contribution to build-up the KIC-RM community.
Performing an LCA for products or processes gives a company valuable information on their environmental footprint. An LCA could also help to map the risks of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) for the company’s operation. However, the existing LCA-method is complex, laborious, not focussed on business solutions, not integrated in operational excellence management tools aiming at innovation, and does not give any overview of risks CRM’s can have for operations. This KAVA offers two sets of training material:
1)            Innovative LCA/CRM teaching material that makes LCA benchmarking and CRM analyses more accessible to SMEs, and easier to use. There will be a focus on recycling and renewable resources, and attention will be drawn to the risk of CRMs in products.
2)            Teaching material for Product & Business Innovation (i.e. eco-efficient value creation of innovative products and services, and how to apply the results of LCA/CRM in the circular economy).
The course is aimed at designers, engineers and business managers.
 
EIT Raw Materials Janez Turk 01.01.2018 30.06.2020
REEBAUX. Prospects of REE recovery from bauxite and bauxite residue in the ESEE region http://reebaux.gfz.hr/ Rare earth elements (REE) are import critical raw material in a large number of modern industrial applications but almost exclusively extracted out of Euope, thus leaving the continent completely dependent on imports. Europe-based REE production shall cover a significant amount of the domestic need and reduce business hazard due to a volatile world market. Bauxite and bauxite residue have been for a long time considered a viable resource of REE. With a large number of bauxite deposits in the ESEE region and a long tradition of aluminum processing industry, which has left also a significant amount of bauxite residue behind, there is a respectable perspective for development of a new REE resource for Europe once geological, mining and technological aspect are well elaborated. The project focuses on extensive data collection on bauxite deposits and bauxite residue accumulations in the ESEE region and their REE abunduces in light of future prospects for REE production to improve European REE supply. Also targeting an increase of innovation capacity in regional bauxite resources management for future developments in REE production, the project constortium will involve students in the execution of the project tasks, and offer several educational events for students and professionals from R&D and industrial sector.
 
EIT Raw Materials Ana Mladenović 01.01.2018 31.03.2021
RIS-RECOVER. Regional innovation scheme for zero waste extraction of critical raw materials https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/ris-recover/ Due to their quantity and composition, mining tailings and metallurgical heaps can pose a substantial risk to environment, while on the other hand representing valuable sources of secondary raw materials, including critical raw materials. South East Europe, including Macedonia, is rich in deposits of secondary raw materials in the form of mining tailings of polymetallic ores and heaps from the metallurgical industry (e.g. landfills of metallurgical slags) and as such represent a relatively undiscovered potential for the European raw materials market sector. The RIS-RECOVER project activities are based on a quintuple innovation helix approach merging industry, research/education, government, the general public and environment sectors in order to increase regional competitiveness based on a regional background and the latest know-how of the RIS-RECOVER consortium. The innovative approach is based on the zero waste paradigm, which means that, once valuable raw materials like CRM and metals are extracted, the residues can be recycled for the construction sector. Such holistic eco-innovative approach of the extraction of critical raw materials and other metals and the beneficial use of residues from old environmental burdens provide a guarantee for the development of regional innovation scheme which is based on the optimal positioning of the management of old landfills and is the most viable from the economic, organizational, technological, environmental and social point of view. This will lead to development of encouraging environment for boosting entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in thre region based on exploration of secondary deposits. The final output of the project will be a regional innovation scheme based on validated and fact-based data including a study of the potential economic, technological, organisational (legislative), environmental and social impacts of applying the innovative methodology of zero waste extraction of valuable materials in Macedonia. Once this will be developed it will be easy to transfer the validated approach to other parts of SEE with similar geological, social, and economic background, as well as to other parts of Europe which will create a ripple effect of creating more sustainable mining and processing of primary and secondary raw materials in Europe and globally.
 
EIT Raw Materials Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.01.2018 31.03.2021
SPL-CYCLE. Closing the loop of the Spent Pot-line SPL in Al smelting process https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/spl-cycle/ Each ton of aluminium produced in Al smelters generates approx. 20kg of hazardous waste, which is a mix of the carbon lining and the refractory lining, known as "spent pot lining" (SPL). Worldwide aluminium production in 2016 was approximately 59 million tonnes, corresponding to the generation of 1.18 million of tonnes of SPL. The current practice of the waste management of hazardous SPL is landfilling or incineration, which costs aluminium producers on average 200 EUR/tonne (240 million EUR annually on a global level).
The project presents a novel zero waste technology, developed by and with external partners from EIT RIS eligible countries (Talum and Bistra, Slovenia) for the recycling of spent pot lining (SPL) from aluminium production, consisting of four main separation processes (preparation, extraction, flotation, and refining) in order to achieve the quality of products needed by end-users. The final products will be used either in aluminium production (recovered carbon and fluoride slats) or will be sold to the refractory industry or the construction industry (recycled refractory residues), with a special focus on the industry in RIS countries, on the one had to help them to solve their particular problems, on the other hand to foster their international competitivness. A pilot demonstration of the operability of the system will be constructed at the Talum company in Slovenia, with the aim of optimizing and valorising the technology. Additionally a reliable business model will be developed enabling the next steps to commercialization. Involvment of another Al producer from EIT RIS region (Aluminium of Greece, Greece) will enable to better positioning of the aluminium industry in EIT RIS eligible countries on worldwide market as well as increase the innovation capacity of EIT RIS countries in general.
The innovative technology itself and the new sustainable approach, originating from EIT RIS region of SEE Europe, will therefore represent a new circular economy business model for aluminium producers around the world with the complete elimination of waste deposition and incineration costs.
 
EIT Raw Materials Ana Mladenović 01.02.2018 31.03.2021
EIT RawMaterials Hub – Regional Center Adria https://eitrawmaterials.eu/regional-center-adria/ Founders of the EIT RawMaterials Hub – Regional Center Adria are Geological Survey of Slovenia, Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute and Faculty of Mining, Geology and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Zagreb.
EIT RawMaterials Hub – Regional Center Adria has been recently established and started operating in January 2018. It represents a hub for mineral raw materials stakeholders primary focused on Slovenia and Croatia with the outreach to West Balkan countries.
EIT RawMaterials presence in the Western Balkans is essential due to the richness of primary and secondary raw materials in the region and is well aligned with the recent European Union (EU) communication on enlargement perspective and enhanced EU engagement with the Western Balkans. EIT RawMaterials Hub – Regional Center Adria will work as an interface between regional environments and EIT RawMaterials, enabling information about EIT RawMaterials projects and activities. One of the main objectives of the EIT RawMaterials Hub – Regional Center Adria is to encourage networking, project ideas exchange and offering support to potential new partners of the EIT RawMaterials community. For all regional stakeholders, business, education institutions, research organisations and local authorities it represents informational “one-stop shop” for EIT RawMaterials knowledge transfer. At the same time, it connects local raw materials communities with their international EIT RawMaterials counterparts.
EIT RawMaterials Hub – Regional Center Adria represents an excellent opportunity for all regional stakeholders to know more about EIT RawMaterials and to become a member of the world’s largest raw materials community.
EIT Raw Materials Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.01.2018 01.01.2023
BloW-uP. Balkans Waste to Products: transfer of NoI model to Balkan area: de-siloing new waste-derived raw materials and devel-oping new applications https://eitrawmaterials.eu/project/blow-up/ The development of marketable products starting from waste (mining sludge and agro residues) has a clear positive impact on environment since it decrease amount of waste to be disposed. Moreover, in the case of agro-waste it could provide higher revenues, if compared to the traditional energy production by combustion. The scouting of innovative applications of waste-derived materials and the development of already identified products/applications will foster the development of new skills (innovative waste management processes; use of alternative materials in existing processes/products; etc.) by the personnel involved. The active involvement as project partners of FREECATS NoI members and new task partners both from CLC-South and ESEE having complementary expertise is, at the same time, a nice outreach of FREECATS NoI. The experience of NoI model will be shared with the new partners and will foster cross-fertilization and the implementation of new collaborations among partners. Moreover, the new links created or consolidated with countries of ESEE region will expand the pool of stakeholders, potential users, companies, etc., who all will be involved in KIC activities and will also widen the impact towards new markets, entrepreneurs, society. The project will raise awareness and knowledge for stakeholders on new applications and methods based on the exploitation of raw materials from waste. The project results are of great interest for industry and could be exploited further in future joint initiatives. The project implementation will set the foundations for a stronger involvement and collaboration across SMEs, universities and research centres, as well as will provide opportunities for a greater exploitation of the results of scientific research in industry. Four companies (Bracco Imaging, IT; ETS LIFE, IT; NBCSYSTEM S.r.l., IT; Valerus, BG) and the Lombardy Energy and Cleantech Cluster (IT), already signed endorsement letters for possible common actions for BloW-uP results valorization. Nanomaterials possess a great potential or have already found applications in several KETs and commercial product and found large number of applications in different fields ranging from FCH technologies to eco-industries and cleantech. Additives for lubricants. Trybological properties of the metal and their oxide nanoparticles became the subject of the research in recent years. Nanoparticles made of Cu, Fe and Co proved to be effective in decreasing the friction of the moving parts in the machines when added to the lubricants, with effectiveness ranging from 20 to 49%, according to newest findings (Padgurskas et al., Tribol. Int. 60, 2013). Morevover, most of the traditional additives (graphite, ZrO2, SiO2) particles are toxic or irritant if inhaled. In BloW-uP project biocompatible iron oxides (hematite or maghemite) will be developed as new lubrication additives. They offer numerous advantages, such as absence of irritant effects, lower cost (since they will be produced by remediated waste sludge). First experiments showed that this application is feasible and related technology already reached TRL3. In BloW-uP TRL will be increased up to 5-6 at least. Carbon based materials for FCs/Electrolyzers and Metal-Air batteries. Catalysts for PEMFC, both in acid and alkaline media can be produced using different non-doped and doped carbonaceous supports. This has enabled to increase the stability and durability of the catalysts and reduce or even eliminate the Pt load, maintaining or improving the performance of commercial catalysts. Among the carbon nanomaterials (CNM), carbon nanofibers (CNF) and doped-CNF present the best behavior. Recently, graphene oxide (GO), reduced GO (RGO) and GO and RGO doped with different heteroatoms and their composites with nanofibers have been applied as electrocatalyst in the Oxygen Reduction Reaction, ORR, Hydrogen Oxidation Reaction, HOR, Hydrogen Evolution Reaction, HER, and Oxygen Evolution Reaction, OER. All these materials present high performance, but they are expensive due to the complexity of production. The development of marketable products for electrodes starting from secondary raw materials derived from wastes would significantly reduce the cost.Materials for cleantech and eco industry. The role of secondary materials is becoming more and more important in unconventional areas such as catalysis and adsorption. The question is how much these materials need to be purified, concentrated and/or activated before their use. An ideal case would be the use of these waste materials or their mixtures as such or after simple mechanical, chemical, or biochemical treatments. Nanosized oxides are widely employed as catalysts by themselves or as supports for different catalytically active phases. Moreover when oxides behave as semiconductors, they are efficient photo-catalysts too. On the other hand, active carbons, also those derived from agro-waste, are widely used as sorbents, catalysts support and materials with advanced features. Depending on the application area and required pretreatment, sustainable solutions for various Cleantech and eco-industries areas can be found. Iron oxides can be utilized, e.g., in oxidation reactions in air pollution abatement (VOC oxidation), waste water treatment (photo-catalysts), in reforming and water-gas shift reaction (syngas and hydrogen production, valorization and purification of gas streams), and as a precipitation chemical e.g. in waste water treatment. For carbon-based materials the known application area is the use agro and other bio wastes as adsorption materials for e.g. waste water treatment. Another application area is to use them as support materials for catalysts and utilized in e.g. reforming reactions after impregnation of active transition metals such as Ni, Cu, and Co. This could mean even putting together two waste streams, mining sludge and waste carbon sources, enabling new innovative use of these waste materials opening possibilities for new markets and even new companies. Several other novel and innovative applications are possible.
 
EIT Raw Materials Ana Mladenović 01.04.2017 31.03.2019
Assets4Rail - Measuring, monitoring and data handling for railway assets; bridges, tunnels, tracks and safety systems http://www.assets4rail.eu/ Assets4Rail shares the Shift2Rail view of having an ageing European railway infrastructure that needs to cope with the expected increased traffics in the future. Likewise, reliable rolling stock will be required to crystallize the desired modal shift to rail. Both goals relay on a proactive and cost-effective maintenance and intervention system in the assets. Assets4Rail aims to contribute to this modal shift by exploring, adapting and testing cutting-edge technologies for railway asset monitoring and maintenance. To achieve that, Assets4Rail follows a twofold approach, including infrastructure (tunnel, bridges, track geometry, and safety systems) and vehicles. A dedicated information model (BIM) will be the keystone of the infrastructure part of the project. This model with integrated algorithms will gather and analyze the information collected by specific sensors which will monitor subsurface tunnel defects, fatigue consumption, noise and vibrations of bridges as well as track geometry. On the other hand, train monitoring will include the installation of track-side and underframe imaging automated system to collect data for detecting specific types of defects that have non-negligible impacts on infrastructure. The additional use of the RFID technology will enable the smooth identification of trains and single elements, associated with the identified rolling stock failures. The combination of mentioned real-time collected data with existing data along the implementation of deep learning techniques for assessing large data volumes will pave the way towards a cost-effective and proactive maintenance process of infrastructure and rolling stock. In addition, two innovative intervention methods, noise rail dampers and the cleaning of long tunnel drainage pipes, will be validated on field. Assets4Rail will benefit from a strong multidisciplinary consortium committed to concrete exploitation activities aligned towards the achievement of the challenging project objectives. Horizon 2020, Shift2Rail scheme Stanislav Lenart 01.12.2018 31.05.2021
MINEA Mining the European Anthroposphere www.minea-network.eu Traditional mining shifts raw materials from the geosphere to the anthroposphere - the part of the environment that is made or modified by humans. These materials end up in consumer and investment goods (anthropogenic deposits), which offer a potential resource from the secondary materials of tomorrow. There are inventories of geogenic deposits (resources) and economically extractable shares (reserves) that provide information on the future availability of primary materials.
But in contrast, there is a lack of information on the availability of secondary materials. Even though the quantity of materials in the anthroposphere has risen dramatically in the last few decades, the resource potential in anthropogenic deposits has not been adequately explored. 
This means that it is impossible to compare resources/reserves of primary and secondary materials; and also means that future commodity markets do not have integrated information on the availability of materials. This Action aims to address that gap by accelerating the classification & reporting of material resources/reserves in the anthroposphere. 
The focus is on: 
1) construction and demolition waste, 
2) materials regained from landfills and mining residues, and; 
3) solid residues from waste incineration.
Today there are large differences between European countries on all three types of waste because of uncoordinated national research, and differing waste management technologies, strategies and policies. 
By coordinating national research activities, this Action aims for a breakthrough in the integrated assessment of primary and secondary resources that is necessary for securing future supply of raw materials.
 
COST Sabina Dolenec 04.03.2016 03.03.2020
CRM Extreme www.crm-extreme.eu/ Difficulties in the access to critical raw materials (CRMs) are expected to depress industrial sectors vital to Europe.
The Action focuses on the substitution of CRMs (like Cr, Co, Nb, W, Y) in high value alloys and metal-matrix composites used under extreme conditions of temperature, loading, friction, wear, corrosion, in Energy, Transportation and Machinery manufacturing industries.
The Action aims to set up a network of expertise to define the state of knowledge and gaps in multi-scale modelling, synthesis, characterization, engineering design and recycling, that could find viable alternatives to CRMs and promote the industrial exploitation of substituted materials.
The Action envisions a fully Sustainable Value Chain approach for:
  • Machinery manufacturing industry
    • Alternatives for Co and W in WC/Co cemented carbide wear resistant tool materials (Hard Metals and Cutting Tools)
    • Alternatives for chromium- and tungsten-alloyed tool steels
  • Energy Industry
    • Reduction of Cr and Y in high-strength steel alloys
    • Alternatives for Cr and other CRMs by hard, wear and corrosion resistant surface coatings
  • Transportation Industry
    • Alternatives for Nb in high-strength low-alloy (HSLA) steel (Automotive)
    • Alternatives for high-temperature Ni-based superalloys (Aerospace)
A four-year Action oriented to strengthen collaboration between active researchers working in the different areas of investigation involving CRMs, is the most suitable initiative to seed the initial catalytic nucleus of growth for EU excellence in strategic CRMs substitution.
 
COST Tadeja Kosec 10.03.2016 09.03.2020
Innovative Solutions for Cross Laminated Timber Structures https://forestvalue.org/joint-calls/joint-call-2017-jc-2017/ Multi-storey timber construction has evolved tremendously during recent years. An important factor has been the development and wide acceptance of cross laminated timber (CLT) as a reliable, efficient, sustainable and versatile material. A number of questions relating to structural design (component and structure level) still remain open, though.
InnoCrossLam aims at increasing even further the competitiveness of CLT as a versatile engineered product, by increasing its predictability in demanding design situations not covered by the guidelines of today, or codes and standards foreseeable in a near future. In addition, the project will further develop a previously suggested (proof-of-concept) multi-functional use of CLT in terms of its thermal activation. This is achieved by allowing conditioned air flow through channels in the CLT elements, making them an integrated part of a heating/ventilation system.
By inviting architects and engineers to define challenges faced in practice, the project will develop solutions making use of cutting-edge methods in research. The topics covered relate to a multitude of disciplines: structural design, mechanical characterization, building physics, fire resistance and sound insulation and the work includes a multi-disciplinary and holistic approach. The project results will include new solutions with recommendations and design approaches for the use of CLT in new applications/design situations, thus increasing further its competitiveness.
Full project partners:
  • The Slovenian Building and Civil Engineering Institute (ZAG) – leading partner
  • Lund University, Sweden (LU)
  • Vienna University of Technology, Austria (TUW)
  • Technical University of Munich, Germany (TUM)
  • University of Navarra, Spain (UNAV)
Associate partners:
  • The Association of German CLT producers
  • The Association of Austrian Wood Industries
  • Hermann Kaufmann & Partner ZT
  • merz kley partner (mkp)
  • Limträteknik AB
  • Arrea
  • Infomadera
  • Swedish Wood
  • White
ERA NET ForestValue Tomaž Pazlar 01.03.2019 28.02.2022
Self-healing As preventive Repair of COncrete Structures www.sarcos.eng.cam.ac.uk The search for smart self-healing materials and preventive repair methods is justified by the increasing sustainability and safety requirements of structures. The appearance of small cracks in concrete is unavoidable, not necessarily causing a risk of collapse for the structure, but certainly accelerating its degradation and diminishing the service life and sustainability of constructions. That loss of performance and functionality promote an increasing investment on maintenance and/or intensive repair/strengthening works. The critical nature of such requirements is signified by their inclusion as priority challenges in the European Research Program.
The first focus of this proposal is to compare the use of self-healing capabilities of concrete with the use of external healing methods for repairing existing concrete elements. Despite the promising potential of the developed healing technologies, they will be real competitive alternatives only when sound and comparative characterization techniques for performance verification are developed, being this SARCOS’s second focus. The third focus deals with modelling the healing mechanisms taking place for the different designs and with predicting the service life increase achieved by these methods.
SARCOS COST Action will be leaded by research institutions searching on different self-healing technologies and repair solutions for extending service life of new and existing concrete structures, with high expertise in developing characterization techniques. Also specialists on modelling healing mechanisms and experts on numerical service life prediction models contribute for the Action’s success. This composition provides a solid framework to advance in implementing innovative and sustainable solutions for extending the service life of concrete structures
COST Andrijana Sever Škapin 30.09.2016 29.09.2020
Fire safe use of bio-based building products www.costfp1404.com

Bio-based building products have a very long history, e.g. as timber structural members. Combustibility was the main reason why bio-based building materials were banned from many applications. When performance based design (PBD) became possible many building regulations opened the market for bio-based building products. However, large differences between regulations in countries exist and the use of combustible building products is still very limited.
Modern living offers attractive, flexible buildings and aims for cost efficient building techniques. Sustainability of building products became an issue. Consumers demand renewable products; however the Fire Safety of the end-product has to remain on a high level.

Fire Safety Engineering (FSE) has achieved large acceptance in the recent years. FSE allows a PBD with customized building solutions. However, the available techniques are often limited to non-combustible materials.

During the last decade the portfolio of building products made from bio-based raw materials has increased enormously. The material properties affecting a possible fire development vary which has been confirmed in many development projects including European researchers.

This Action wants to create a platform for networking, exchange and collection of performance data, experiences, authority- and climate requirements which affect the design with respect to the Fire Safe Use of Bio-based Building Products. By systematically organisation knowledge in this area will advance at a significant higher rate. The Action will Exchange researchers, organize Workshop and create comprehensive dissemination material.

COST Friderik Knez 05.12.2014 04.12.2018
Basis of structural timber design – from research to standards www.costfp1402.tum.de In the last two decades, the basis of scientific knowledge in timber engineering has developed immensely. The documented results, however, are inhomogeneous and fragmented and do not provide timber engineering community with the relevant information to prove the reliable and safe application of newly developed wood products in construction. The aim of the Action is to overcome the gap between broadly available scientific results and the specific information needed by designers, industry, authorities and code committees, providing transfer for practical application in timber design and innovation. This will be achieved by the coordination, consolidation, harmonization and dissemination of recent efforts in research and development that aim at enhancing existing or deriving new methods and design rules for timber structures. The results of this Action will increase the confidence of code-writers, authorities, designers and end-users in the safe, durable and efficient use of timber in structures and consequently increase its acceptance and use in the design of buildings.
 
COST Tomaž Pazlar 25.11.2014 25.11.2018
Forests, their Products and Services costfp1407.iam.upr.si/en The forest-based sector can become a leader in achieving the European Commission’s ambitious target of reducing CO2 emissions with innovative production technologies, reduced energy consumption, increased wood products recycling, and reuse. Apart from these undoubted environmental benefits, the use of forest products in long life products, such as built environment applications, allows for the possibility of extended storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Wood modification (chemical, thermal, impregnation) is an assortment of the innovative processes currently being adopted. Though many aspects of these treatments are known, the fundamental influence of the process on product performance, the environment, and end of life scenarios remain unknown. It is essential to integrate interactive assessment of process parameters, developed product properties, and environmental impacts. To optimize modification processing to minimize environmental impacts, much more information must be gathered about all process related factors affecting the environment (VOC, energy use, end of life use, etc.). This Action will investigate modification processing and products design with emphasis on their environmental impacts. This will require analysis of the whole value chain, from forest through processing, installation, in-service, end of life, second/third life (cascading) and ultimately incineration with energy recovery. COST Friderik Knez 10.03.2015 09.03.2019
Quantifying the value of structural health monitoring www.cost-tu1402.eu/

SHM ... just value it

We build upon decades of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), structural risk and reliability research and development grown into a comprehensive research community and an important part of today’s infrastructure engineering. Our network incorporates a tremendous knowledge about SHM technologies, SHM data analysis, structural performance and deterioration as well as infrastructure operation.

We want to enhance the benefit of SHM by novel utilization of applied decision analysis on how to assess the value of SHM – even before it is implemented. We know already that the value of SHM can be tremendous. We just have to quantify it. Knowing the value of SHM, we can improve the decision basis for design, operation and life-cycle integrity management of structures and facilitate more cost efficient, reliable and safe strategies for maintaining and developing the built environment to the benefit of society.
COST Aleš Žnidarič 13.11.2014 13.11.2018
Towards the next generation of standards for service life of cement-based materials and structures www.tu1404.eu Cement-based materials (CBM)  are the foremost construction materials worldwide. Therefore, there are widely accepted standards for their structural applications. However, for service life designs, current approaches largely depend on CBM strength class and restrictions on CBM constituents. Consequently, the service life behaviour of CBM structures is still analysed with insufficiently rigorous approaches that are based on outdated scientific knowledge, particularly regarding the cumulative behaviour since early ages. This results in partial client satisfaction at the completion stage, increased maintenance/repair costs from early ages, and reduced service life of structures, with consequential economic/sustainability impacts. Despite significant research advances that have been achieved in the last decade in testing and simulation of CBM and thereby predicting their service life performance, there have been no generalized European-funded Actions to assure their incorporation in standards available to designers/contractors. Therefore, the main purpose of this Action is to bring together relevant stakeholders (experimental and numerical researchers, standardization offices, manufacturers, designers, contractors, owners and authorities) in order to accelerate knowledge transfer in the form of new guidelines/recommendations, introduce new products and technologies to the market, and promote international and inter-speciality exchange of new information, creating avenues for new developments. COST Aljoša Šajna 18.11.2014 17.11.2018
European network for shallow geothermal energy applications in buildings and infrastructures GABI www.foundationgeotherm.org/

The increased need for renewable energy sources has led to expansion of shallow geothermal applications for heating and/or cooling of buildings. The integration of heat exchangers in those elements of the structure that interface with the ground, such as foundations, tunnels and diaphragm walls, is particularly attractive because of the inherent cost saving involved in combining a required structural component with the harvesting of geothermal energy. Thermoactive geostructures present the additional benefit of relying on localized resources (the ground) and therefore do not need additional infrastructural investments. By providing an alternative to fossil fuels and reducing peak demand from the grid, they also provide an attractive tool towards energy independence and distributed generation with no adverse impact on the environment. However, the widespread application of this sustainable technology is currently hindered by the large heterogeneity in the development and regulatory framework in European countries.

By sharing knowledge and experiences, the use of thermoactive geostructures will increase, especially in countries with less experience. This newly created network will ensure an inclusive and open platform for scientific discussion to define European best practice rules for geothermal applications, promote public awareness and confidence in this technique, and foster advancement in knowledge through collaboration.

COST Stanislav Lenart 09.03.2015 08.03.2019
Quality specifications for roadway bridges, standardization at a European level BridgeSpec www.tu1406.eu

During the implementation of asset management strategies, maintenance actions are required in order to keep assets at a desired performance level. In case of roadway bridges, specific performance indicators are established for their components. These indicators can be qualitative or quantitative based, and they can be obtained during principal inspections, through a visual examination, a non-destructive test or a temporary or permanent monitoring system.

Then, obtained indicators are compared with performance goals, in order to evaluate if the quality control plan is accomplished. It is verified that there is a large disparity in Europe regarding the way these indicators are quantified and how such goals are specified. Therefore, this Action aims to bring together, for the first time, both research and practicing community in order to accelerate the establishment of a European guideline in this subject. It will be also analysed new indicators related to sustainable performance of roadway bridges.

COST Andrej Anžlin 16.04.2015 15.04.2019
Mineral wool waste back to loop with advanced sorting, pre-treatment, and alkali activation The circular economy project WOOL2LOOP (Mineral wool waste back to loop with advanced sorting, pre-treatment, and alkali activation)  has received significant funding from the EU Horizon 2020 (Horizon 2020) funding programme. The total budget for the project is EUR 6.7 million, of which EU funding amounts to EUR 5.3 million. The three-year project started on 1st of June, 2019. WOOL2LOOP is Europe's first EU innovation project that focuses exclusively on the recovery of mineral wool waste from the construction industry. In addition, the project is the first in the world aiming to commercialize mineral wool geopolymer.
The project aims at converting mineral wool from construction and demolition waste into new materials. In the project, mineral wool waste is recovered through geopolymer technology. Mineral wool geopolymer provides cement substitute raw material for new construction products. In addition, the project focuses on demolition process, sorting, analysing and processing of mineral wool waste. In Europe, about 2.5 million tons of mineral wool waste is generated each year in construction and demolition. At present, mineral wool waste is almost completely landfilled, resulting in an annual cost of around EUR 250 million for the construction sector. By producing new building products by geopolymerization from mineral wool waste, it is possible to replace the virgin raw materials used in construction and significantly reduce the carbon footprint of building materials production and construction industry.The WOOL2LOOP project aims not only to reduce landfill waste from construction and demolition, but also to save non-renewable resources used in production of stone and cement-based construction products. The project explores the use of mineral wool-based geopolymers as a raw material in, for example, mortars, facade panels, yard slabs, acoustic boards and 3D printable building material.
The project involves a total of 15 companies and research institutes, as well as extensive pilots and demonstrations across Europe. The project includes the world's largest construction material producers and innovative start-up companies in the field of circular economy. The project is coordinated by Saint-Gobain Finland Oy, a construction product manufacturer from Finland. The scientific coordinator of the project is University of Oulu. From Slovenia, partners of the project  are Termit d.d., Zavod 404 and Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute (ZAG).
Vilma Ducman 01.06.2019 31.05.2022
RIS-ALiCE - Al-rich industrial residues for mineral binders in ESEE region http://ris-alice.zag.si/ Although the EU Commission by Raw Materials Initiative promotes boosting resource efficiency and recycling, European economy loses a significant amount of potential secondary raw materials. Huge amounts of various Al-rich residues (steel slags, red mud, ashes, landfills of bauxite mines) with low recycling rate or landfilled in RIS countries present high secondary mineral resources potential. A promising way of recycling these waste mineral materials is the synthesis of sustainable mineral binders with high Al content, which can be further used as environment friendly construction material. On the other hand, high Al content is the main pain point for the production of Al-rich mineral binders, according to high need of valuable natural resource bauxite. In RIS-ALiCE, this challenge will be successfully overcomed by the replacement of bauxite with Al-rich industrial and mine residues. Moreover, this approach will represent an innovative recycling case study for the ESEE region. The main outcomes of ALiCE project are: (i) establishment of the long-term active network between the producers and the end-users of Al-rich industrial residues; (ii) valorization of Al-rich residues by production of environmentally friendly high-Al mineral binders on data from Slovenia, Hungary and BIH; (iii) knowledge transfer from Slovenia, Hungary and BIH to the whole ESEE region; (iiii) contribution to implementation of circular economy and zero-waste management for Al-rich industrial waste in ESEE region. Realization of outcomes in time and on budget will be assured by: (i) constructing an user-friendly upgradeable registry of Al-rich residues, adopted for the purpose of synthesis environment friendly high-Al mineral binders; (ii) promotion of the register and education on the use and updating the register by organizing a series of workshops and networking events; (iii) organization of the training school for the valorization of Al-rich residues. The project will impact: (i) EU by encouraging circular economy and thus enhancing the raw materials self-supply; (ii) EIT Raw Materials by implementation and promotion of sustainable raw materials management, introducing innovative raw materials recycling approaches to the ESEE region and by setting up and strengthening the networks between waste producers and mineral end-users; (iii) RIS-ALiCE consortium by creating new business opportunities and solutions for environmental friendly raw handling by industrial and mining wastes. The RIS-ALiCE project has capacity to get a real impact, since: (i) the use of similar waste materials for synthesis of mineral binders have been already proven to be feasible in reliable studies; (ii) RIS countries have a large capacity of unused Al-rich waste materials; (iii) Al-residue`s and mineral binders` producers in RIS countries are highly motivated to find common advanced and sustainable solutions for handling by Al-rich residues.
 
EIT Raw Materials Sabina Dolenec 01.03.2019 28.02.2022
RIS-CuRE - Zero waste recovery of copper tailings in the ESEE region //eitrawmaterials.eu/project/ris-cure/ Although mining and processing tailings can present a substantial risk to the environment, on the other hand they represent valuable sources of secondary and in particular critical raw materials. Serbia and FYR Macedonia have an abundance of Cu mines which have been exploited since ancient times. These activities generated about 920 M tonnes of different types of mining, floatation and metallurgical tailings, containing approximately 1.3 M tonnes of Cu, 128 tonnes of Ag and 23 tonnes of Au, which could be a valuable resource for the European raw materials market sector.

The activities of the RIS‐CuRE project are based on an innovation model merging all relevant stakeholders within the knowledge triangle in the field of industry, research, and education in order to increase regional competitiveness based on a regional scale, taking into account the latest know‐how of the RIS‐CuRE consortium. This innovative approach is based on the zero waste paradigm, which means that, once valuable raw materials such as CRM and other metals are extracted, the residues can be recycled for the construction sector. Such a holistic eco‐innovative approach to the extraction of valuable metals and the beneficial use of residues after the extraction of metals provides a guarantee for the successful development of a regional innovation scheme based on the exploitation of tailings, and is, from the economic, organizational, technological, environmental and social points of view, the most viable option. This will lead to the development of an encouraging environment for the boosting entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in the region, based on the exploration of secondary deposits. The final output of the project will be a strong sustained regional network, based on validated and fact‐based data, including a study of the potential economic, technological, organisational (legislative), environmental and social impacts of applying the innovative methodology of the zero waste extraction of valuable materials in Serbia and the FYR of Macedonia. Once this has been developed it will be easy to transfer the validated approach to other parts of the ESEE region with similar geological, social, and economic backgrounds, as well as to other parts of Europe, which will create a ripple effect in the further development of more sustainable mining and the processing of primary and secondary raw materials in Europe, and worldwide.
EIT Raw Materials Ana Mladenović 01.01.2019 31.12.2021
WhISPER - Waterless Iron Silicate Production with Energy Recovery //eitrawmaterials.eu/project/whisper/ In the pyrometallurgical copper smelting process the main product is copper but there are other products generated in consequence of the copper extraction of the ore, this is the case of the Iron Silicates (commonly called copper slags) which are the largest co-product generated during the smelting and converting processes of the pyrometallurgical route: for every ton of copper production about 2.2 ton of copper slag is generated.
The European copper sector generates approximately 5 million tons of iron silicates in the copper production by copper the pyrometallurgical route in the EU, containing valuable metals and other compounds.
Traditionally, copper slags were considered as undesirable “waste” materials that had to be discarded at an additional cost. This material is considered a product by Atlantic Copper because can be used to several applications in the construction sector (but it has a low value in the market), in other smelters is still considered a waste.
The objective of WhISPER is to substitute the actual technology for the granulation of the iron silicate by a new technology to the copper sector (atomization technology) which is more sustainable, from the environmental and from the economic point of view.
Thanks to the atomization technology, water consumption will be drastically reduced, and heat will be recovered in the granulation process of the copper slags, so operational costs will decrease significantly and will make the process greener.
And, the second benefit of the technology is that the quality of the copper slag is expected to improve, and so the product will have an added value. The new applications of the iron silicate will be studied in the project.
WhISPER is looking for a more efficient pyrometallurgical system with the application of a new atomization technology that will lead to a reduction of the environmental footprint while economic benefits increase.
EIT Raw Materials Mateja Košir 01.01.2019 31.12.2021
CORTOOLS. Co-creation of corrosion monitoring and prediction tools //eitrawmaterials.eu/project/cortools/ Corrosion is the most important materials failure mechanism in industry and annually responsible for the costs amounting approximately to 2 trillion €. In this project, corrosion on-line monitoring and prediction software tools are developed to respond to the needs of raw materials industry. For the project partners, the developed tools enable more than 1 M€ annual savings through the prevention of corrosion failures. For the European raw materials industry in whole, the project may enable saving reaching the magnitude of billions of euros. Thus the project is very important for the competitiveness of European Raw Materials sector. The market potential of the tools lie in all industry sectors facing challenges with materials durability in harsh operation conditions. During the project, the initial business plan will be drafted and further developed though a market analysis. The strategy plan for commercialisation is prepared, including estimation of time-to-market and the protected IPR, considering the steps that will be taken after the project, e.g., licencing.
The corrosion on-line monitoring and prediction software tools provide the raw materials sector a footstep towards digitalization. Another giant progress is the link to artificial intelligence (AI); it is here used in the computational modelling, yet remote collection of on-line monitoring data allows later for the hidden causalities in the project conditions (e.g., mineral quality in hydrometallurgy) and the detected corrosion rate to be disclosed with the aid of AI.
EIT Raw Materials Tadeja Kosec 01.01.2019 31.12.2021
Seismic response of masonry structures built from Porotherm W.i plan units Wienerberger AG, ARRS Matija Gams 01.01.2017 31.12.2017
Seismic response of masonry walls by experimental testing Arbeitsgemeinschaft Mauerziegel, ARRS Marjanca Lutman 01.01.2017 31.12.2019
Connected Data for Effective Collaboration http://codec-project.eu/ In asset management, having the right information available, at the right time, to the right person(s), has always been a critical component for success (no matter how success is defined). The need to achieve this ideal is more pressing now than ever before, and will only continue to become more so as industry, business, and technology evolve on the current trajectory towards more sources, volume, and connectedness of data. As projects become more complex, and stakes increase, those who do not succeed in capitalising on the richness of potential data sources will inevitably fall behind. Of course, Building Information Management (BIM) has come to the fore as a framework of principles and best practice for asset data management, with many ongoing initiatives to develop and apply BIM.
This project aims to understand, in a very practical way, the key means for successful implementation of BIM principles within the European highways industry, in particular with regards to freeing and enriching data flow to and from asset management systems. It is expected that outcomes will be of both strategic use to CEDR (and other Europe-wide industry bodies), and operational use to individual NRAs (and other stakeholders such as software companies, consultancies, etc.) In strategic terms, project outcomes should support CEDR in setting direction for its members, its research efforts, and its industry engagement. In operational terms, NRAs and other stakeholders should be able to find practical examples of how to implement BIM principles, in line with CEDR objectives, in real cases.
The project’s overarching objectives are to:
  • Understand the current status of information management across the highways industry in Europe, and the risks and opportunities for the coming years
  • Derive best practice guidance in the use of sensor/scanning technology to drive AM, by investigating real examples of application to assets
  • Demonstrate and develop practical methods for implementation of CEDR objectives for BIM, by undertaking applied projects in real use cases and consolidating outcomes
  • Provide recommendations for aligning the software industry with CEDR objectives for BIM by understanding the risks and opportunities involved in the market
The project approach will be highly consultative in many areas, ensuring that input is taken
from key stakeholders across the industry, and that outcomes will be practical, and aligned with real, immediate requirements. Along with this, the experience, expertise, and connections of the consortium partners will be deployed to ensure that the project is successfully delivered to a high technical standard, in line with asset management best practice and the latest technological developments in data capture and AM software. The involvement of consortium members in relevant existing projects will be harnessed as much as possible to integrate learning – such projects include efforts to create the truly smart cities of the future, the remote monitoring of infrastructure, and the development of BIM-integrated asset management software.
We also have overarching objectives for project management and dissemination:
  • Ensure that the project is delivered to time, cost and quality, and that the PEB and other relevant stakeholders are kept informed throughout
  • Ensure that project outcomes are of maximum practical use to CEDR members, and are effectively disseminated to CEDR members and other relevant stakeholders
These will be assured thanks to TRL’s experience in managing multi-partner projects (including many CEDR projects), FEHRL’s experience in disseminating knowledge to the industry, and the full alignment of the wider project team behind these objectives.
 
CEDR Conference of European Directors of Roads Darko Kokot 01.10.2019 30.09.2021
POCYTIF - A POsitive Energy CITY Transformation Framework https://pocityf.eu/ Smart cities shape their future by leading in technology adoption, resource efficiency and citizen/ stakeholder engagement. On this basis, the POCITYF smart city project mobilises two Lighthouse (LH) cities (Evora-PT and Alkmaar-NL), and six 6 Fellow (FC) cities (Granada-ES, Bari-ΙΤ, Celje-SI, Ujpest-HU, Ioannina-GR and Hvidovre-DK) which already share knowledge, coordinate their efforts, and ride on the same four Energy Τransition Τracks (EΤΤs) to shape their own, unique bold city visions by taking care of their cultural heritage. The later can be critical for environmental sustainability as energy efficiency goals seem to contradict with the protection of historical buildings. POCITYF’s city leaders have embraced the smart city concept with enthusiasm and seized the opportunity with the aim to transform their cities into more efficient, healthy, open, accessible, sustainable, prosperous, and thus, more attractive living environments. Building upon already implemented pre-pilot activities, Evora and Alkmaar will demonstrate integrated solutions for: positive energy blocks (ETT#1), grid flexibility (ETT#2), e-mobility integration into the grid and city planning (ETT#3) and citizen-driven innovation supported by the integration of innovative apps into enhanced City Information Platforms (ETT#4). In total, four mixed-use districts – among them the historical city centre of Evora, characterized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO - have been selected for the demonstration activities in LH cities representing an area of 739Ha hosting 17,500 residents. Demonstration will be performed in 21 building complexes covering a total floor area of 87,480 m2 with current energy needs of 13.25GWh/year. For this purpose, overall 10 integrated solutions (IS) have been defined for demonstration, comprising 73 individual innovative elements (technologies, tools, methods) that have been identified as a result of an intensive and laborious collaborative process. The respective technology providers have been included in the two LH ecosystems shaping a scheme of 25 LH partners. A number of appropriately designed citizen and community engagement strategies, along with open innovation and co-creation activities will be in parallel deployed to ensure the success of demonstration activities, as well as long-lasting adoption. To further strengthen and facilitate demonstration activities, POCITYF will introduce IS-specific business models applied at sharing, barter and circular economy settings. Along with the LH cities, the FCs ecosystem of 13 partners will work on the preparation of the targeted replication activities. As a first step for wide scale replication, FCs have identified over 140,000m2 of floor area where POCITYF’s IS will be replicated, including already identified 18 historical buildings. The project’s monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment activities will ensure effective demonstration, fast replication and wide scale roll out within POCITYF cities and across Europe.
This will put POCITYF in the position to accomplish: a) Local RES penetration of 16.2 GWh/year within the districts; b) 144% coverage of total net energy needs by local RES; c) Waste heat recovery of 5,880MWh; d) Thermal storage at district level equivalent to 2,052MWh. All the above, along with e-mobility uptake, will result in an estimated total of 9,743 GHG reduction (in tons CO2/year). In total, 2.32 GWh annual savings will be achieved by the two LHs by 2024 within their PEBs. The two LHs PEBs will be overpositive with a total outcoming energy of 2.1 GWh/y for all Evora’s PEBs and 5.7 GWh/y for Alkmaar. To achieve the above, on top of the POCITYF budget of 22,4M€, the two LH cities and the six FCs have planned investments of 40M€ and 350M€ respectively up to 2024, while they expect to attract an additional amount of €1bn for the period of 2025-2029
Horizon 2020 Sabina Jordan 01.10.2019 30.09.2024
LIFE HIDAQUA - Sustainable water management on high water demanding industries http://hidaqua.zag.si The LIFE HIDAQUA addresses water management in industrialized EU areas by tackling the following environmental problems: i) the depletion of natural drinking water sources, especially in areas facing water scarcity, ii) the low ecological and chemical status of natural water bodies due to the emissions of pollutants in industrial wastewater discharge, iii) burdening of the environment, especially natural water bodies, with the discharging of liquids and the landfilling of wastes from water treatment processes.
 
According to the EU Commission, the frequency and extent of droughts has increased in recent years (about 11 % of the EU population and 17 % of its territory has been affected by water scarcity) causing costs amounting to at least 100 billion EUR over the last 30 years. By recycling/reclaiming treated industrial wastewater, the project will contribute to the EU's goal of increasing the recycling of water from the current 1 Billion m3 to more than 6 Billion m3 by 2025; this will alleviate the problem of water scarcity.
 
Industrial wastewater, such as that from the automotive industry, is often burdened by difficult-to-biodegrade organic pollutants, e.g. phenols and mineral oils. These pollutants are not efficiently removed at conventional municipal wastewater treatment facilities, from which they are released into natural water bodies, thus representing a persistent threat to natural water environments. Emissions of contaminants in industrial wastewater are addressed by the Industrial Emissions Directive, which proposes the use of the best available technologies (BAT) for the elimination of the emissions of pollutants at their source, i.e. at the factory. This is well-aligned with the proposed project, which will make use of the latest state-of-the-art solutions in order to demonstrate the on-site treatment of industrial wastewater.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/LifeHidaqua/  
Linkedin -  https://www.linkedin.com/company/life-hidaqua
 
LIFE programme Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.09.2019 30.09.2023
LIFE IP CARE4CLIMATE - Boosting greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2020 with a view to 2030 – promoting sustainable transport, energy efficiency, renewable energies and sustainable, climate protecting land use in the transition to low carbon society https://www.care4climate.si/sl / LIFE programme and Republic of Slovenia Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning Sabina Jordan 01.01.2019 31.12.2026
ADRISEISMIC - New approaches for seismic improvement and renovation of Adriatic and Ionian historic urban centers https://adriseismic.adrioninterreg.eu/ The Adriatic-Ionian area is heavily undermined by earthquakes. Each country has developed laws and norms, methods, techniques and expertise for tackling earthquake risks and for reducing seismic vulnerability of the built environment. Nevertheless, in urban areas and particularly in historical centers they remain high.
ADRISEISMIC overall objective is to exchange and systematize knowledge and practices in tackling the reduction of the seismic vulnerability of the built environment in Project Partner countries (Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Albania, Greece), to harmonize planning and management of emergencies after seismic events and the post-earthquake phase, in order to drastically improve the approaches for dealing with and to secure the reduction of seismic vulnerability among ADRION regions. The main focus areas are the historical urban centers and historical squares and their surrounding buildings, conceived as symbol of local identity and socio-economic cores for the ADRION settlements.
By building upon the available knowledge and thanks to territorial cooperation, ADRISEISMIC will develop new integrated approaches to innovate and harmonize the normative, technical and training frameworks in the ADRION area, providing ready-to-use methods, tools and procedures that will be integrated into the existing policies and practices, thus strengthening local responses and reducing vulnerability to natural hazards.
Interreg Adrion program Andrej Anžlin 01.04.2020 01.04.2022
RIS-RESTORE: Evaluation of Red Mud Tailings in the ESEE region http://ris-restore.zag.si/
RIS-RESTORE project with full title »Evaluation of Red Mud Tailings in the ESEE region« is a three years project (2020-2022) with the aim to establish a self-sustaining network of stakeholders, who are interested in the reprocessing of red mud tailings in the ESEE region and the extraction of heavy minerals which contain valuable metals (REE, Sc, Y, Hf, Zr, and Ti). The estimated quantity of red mud in the region is more than 85 M tonnes. 5 tailings in 4 countries will be examined, and the existing BAT for the extraction of heavy minerals will be evaluated.

Red mud (BRM) is a hazardous solid caustic waste formed after the digestion of bauxite ore with sodium hydroxide in Bayer’s process for the extraction of alumina. More than 85 M tonnes of red mud from past metallurgical activities have been landfilled in the countries of the Western Balkans, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece and Hungary. These tailings contain substantial quantities of heavy minerals containing REE, Sc, Y, Zr, Hf, and Ti. The main objective of the proposal is to establish a self-sustaining network of Al value chain stakeholders, including potential users of extracted heavy minerals concentrates and potential users of recycling residues in building sector, within whose scope the zero waste extraction of valuable metals from red mud tailings would be established and optimised. Secondly, the project will evaluate the already existing Best Available Technology for gravitational and magnetic separation (which was originally developed for the extraction of heavy minerals out of different types of ores), and could be used for the extraction of heavy minerals from red mud. The activities will cover a large area of RIS ESSE eligible countries (i.e. Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Greece).
It is expected that the establishment of such a self-sustained network of stakeholders along Al value chain will increase the competitiveness of regional value chains, from the prospecting of red mud tailings and the extraction of valuable raw materials in different targeted markets to environmentally-orientated technologies and the construction sector. Besides achieving increased competitiveness of the RIS region, the project will determine the stocks of REE, Sc, Y, Zr, Hf, and Ti in red mud tailings in the ESEE region, which is expected to significantly strengthen Europe's independence from the import of raw materials by opening up new European secondary mining regions containing critical and other valuable raw materials.
EIT Raw Materials Ana Mladenović 01.04.2020 31.03.2023
Towards improved Assessment of Safety Performance for long-term operation LTO of nuclear Civil Engineering Structures ACES https://aces-h2020.eu/ A nuclear power plant involves complex engineering structures that are important to its safe and reliable operation. Concrete structures in nuclear power plants (NPP) provide foundation, structural support, biological shielding, containment, and protection against internal and external hazards. The ageing of these concrete structures increases the risk to public health and safety, if not controlled. The EU-funded ACES project will advance the assessment of safety performance for long-term operation of nuclear power plants. Experimental and modelling techniques will be used to study related deterioration and ageing mechanisms. The project will focus on physical understanding of the degradation processes, such as radiation effects, internal swelling reactions and liner corrosion. The findings will also assist in improving the safety and operational designs of next-generation nuclear plants.
ZAG is involved in the project as a leading partner of the work package dealing with the corrosion assessment of embedded liners in concrete (WP2). This work package will focus on the parts of NPP where safety is the major concern, i.e. chloride-induced corrosion of steel cylinder concrete pipes (SCCP) and to crevice corrosion of steel liner embedded in concrete of containment building. Due to the lack of information and their poor accessibility, both these systems are difficult for thorough and timely assessment of the corrosion conditions, so the aim of the work package is to provide basic information for modelling and non-destructive inspection, and to facilitate appropriate preventive measures
Horizon 2020 Andraž Legat 01.09.2020 31.08.2024
3DBRIEFCASE - Learning the use of minerals through non conventional and digital tools http://briefcase.eitrawmaterials.eu/ The 3D BRIEFCASE Project seeks to bring mineral raw materials and mining closer to society as a whole. Its ultimate goal is that citizens from an early age and students, get to know and understand from where the mineral products they use in daily life come from what minerals can be found in their environment and for what are being exploited, and how our daily purchasing decisions affect the social environment of the people who live in countries with mineral resources exploitation. It shows that it is not possible to live without minerals and without mines but, through example and a friendly approach, they will see that mining is a modern activity and that its societal and environment impact can be mitigated by e.g. implementation of zero waste mining as part of circular economy, ensuring sustainable mineral extraction, by not endangering the supply of future generations.
The BRIEFCASE is an innovative product that has been used successfully by the Geo-Mining museum, part of the Spanish Geological Survey (Madrid. Spain) in terms of minerals and their daily use and also by the Styrian Environmental Education Center (Austria) which developed a suitcase with critical raw materials and their use in mobile phones.
During the first part of the project (2019) we are developing new BRIEFCASEs covering sensitive aspects of the mining activities and focusing on primary school pupils to students (6-14 years old) and their teachers. The Project has generated practical and theoretical contents for the physical briefcases which cover the following minerals: cobalt, col-tan (Columbo-Tantalite), diamond, germanium, gold, lithium, and tin, and is developing the virtual material (web) compiling all these materials to offer an interactive tool that can be self-used by pupils. Some workshops will be offered in the partner’s locations during the end of the current year, to teach teachers how to use this tool.
Now, this second part of the project, 3D BRIEFCASE (2020-2021), proposes to improve the virtual tool into an augmented reality (AR) application to attract students up to 18 years old and to adapt the tool for a 3D-application to play with 3D-glasses for permanent usage in science museums and educational centres, and for private use of the general public. We will create new BRIEFCASES, specially designed to cover the minerals exploited by our mining partners, helping them to gain acceptance in the surrounded communities and demonstrating the effectiveness of the tool.
Physical BRIEFCASEs will be provided free of charge to the academic centres. All the developed material will be available for free to the academic and educative community, which will be able to continue using it in their workshops and courses in an autonomous way, as well as lend it to the teaching centres, museums, conferences, and events that may request it, including training, as the workshops will be later collected on the website and anyone could replicate them. In case of industrial companies, we will offer the service for the creation of new BRIEFCASEs to cover their specific needs and demonstrative workshops to show how to use the tool.
https://www.thebriefcasegame.eu/
EIT RawMaterials Petra Vrhovnik 01.01.2020 31.12.2021
oVERFLOw - Vulnerability assessment of embankments and bridges exposed to flooding hazards https://projectoverflow.eu/ Flooding is a significant threat to human-life, ecosystems, cultural heritage and society in general. The Netherlands is the most flood prone country in the EU1. The Great North Sea flood of 1953 caused breaches of the famous levee (embankments and dikes) system causing 1,835 fatalities, the inundation of 200,000 hectares of land and severe damage to cultural heritage (particularly in the vicinity of failed levees e.g. fortified towns, polder mills and water mills). In response the country built strategic large flood defence schemes and developed a sophisticated flood risk management system VNK22 for levees. Scour erosion of bridge foundations as a consequence of flooding is the number one cause of failure for bridges located over waterways3. In addition to other impacts such failures greatly affect emergency response capability during a flood event. In recent years Europe has experienced some of the largest flood events in its history, as for example in May 2014 extensive flooding affected over 1,5 million people across Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia.
While the mean daily rainfall in Southern Eastern Europe (SEE) has increased only a little since 1950, the intensity of the strongest rainfall events rose by one third4. In May 2014, daily rainfall amounts were higher than at any time since records began. The frequency of such potentially devastating extremes in the region has doubled over the past sixty years. According to IPCC projections many countries will be exposed to higher peak river discharges in the near future. The three partner countries in the oVERFLOW project are particularly vulnerable to cross-border river flooding in their position near the end of major European river systems.
The catastrophic inundation of New Orleans in 2005 demonstrated vividly that the resilience of a flood defence system is controlled by the weakest link in the network. Whilst the risk based approach VNK2 is the state of the art, the determination of the probability of failure of a levee (which is fundamental to quantifying risk) is critically dependent on a number of highly uncertain parameters. In the VNK2 approach the most significant uncertainties relate to (i) length effects – whereby the probability of failure increases with length of the element as the possibility of encountering a soft or weak zone that would cause collapse increases and (ii) uncertainty about the location of potential seepage causing piping or boils. A number of recent collapses of major bridges shortly after inspection5 highlight the constraint that assessment of critical infrastructure takes place periodically (typically over a one to five year period) and return a unique, stationary condition score. During flood induced failures (collapse of a levee or scour of a bridge) the condition can change in a matter of minutes.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme Union Civil Protection Mechanism Grant Agreement Number 874421 Andrej Anžlin 01.12.2019 30.11.2021
LIFEproETV – Promotion and implementation of ETV as an EU voluntary scheme for verifying performance of environmental technologies http://lifeproetv.eu/ General information:
The LIFEproETV project is a project funded by the LIFE programme, a funding instrument from European Union's for the environment and climate action. The project is coordinated by the Institute for Ecology of Industrial Areas - IETU from Poland, which already has its own scheme for verification of ETV in the field of water and soil. The project will be implemented in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Spain and Poland. In addition, project beneficiaries are ZAG, CETAQUA, EIT RawMaterials, ENEA, INSAVALOR, IOS-PIB and KöVET. The main purpose is to raise awareness of the verification of environmental technologies through the voluntary ETV scheme, based on ISO 14034. The project runs from 1/9/2020 to 31/12/2022. Total project budget is 1.876.282 EUR, and 52.7 % is financed by the EU.

Desciption:
According to the European Environment Agency, the overall environmental performance of EU industry has improved over recent decades however it still remains responsible for a significant burden on environment in terms of emissions of key air pollutants and greenhouse gases, release of pollutants to water and soil, generation of waste, the use of energy, consumption of resources etc. Increased environmental awareness of business, obligations to comply with the environmental acquis and the current EU and national policies context have led to an increase in the supply and demand of new environmental technologies.

These technologies provide a much higher potential in reducing the environmental impact of industries. They demonstrate a beyond average environmental performance compared to conventional technologies by providing new technical solutions improving resource and energy efficiency, reducing emissions and minimizing pollution and waste generation often in a better and more cost effective way than their currently used alternatives. Despite these benefits offered by ecoinnovations, technology users, in particular public sector or large industries remain averse to trying new concepts being unsure if what they are offered can be trusted. The main reason is lack of credible information on the performance and impacts of new environmental technologies. In makes their penetration to the market low, posing a serious barrier to technology providers due to lack of a common level playing field for the environmental technologies market.

In recognition to this problem, the European Commission launched an EU ETV Pilot programme as a voluntary environmental scheme (VES) in 2011 with the participation of 7 EU Member States and 3 technology areas. ISO14034 based EU ETV scheme will provide everyone from developers to buyers, investors and authorities a consistent approach to the independent verification of performance and impacts of new technologies. Environmental initiatives which include independent verification have a high chance of success as they build in credibility and technology user confidence that the environmental claims are actually being delivered. This is particularly important if industry intends to obtain a financial benefit from its environmental activities, even if this is not their primary motivation.

Therefore strong market recognition and acceptance of ETV will: 1) build trust in innovative environmental technologies, 2) help industries deploy them to reduce their environmental  burden,3)contribute to the implementation of the EU environmental policies related reducing the environmental impact of industries, implementing circular economy and strengthening the market share of green technologies,4) boost the EU market of environmental technologies,5) enhance the competitiveness of EU economy as called in 7th Environmental Action Programme, Circular Economy Package, EC Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe, Green Action Plan for SMEs. In addition the project will also contribute to the climate neutrality objective of the Green Deal for Europe.

Twitter @LIFEproETV - https://twitter.com/LIFEproETV
Linkedin -  www.linkedin.com/showcase/lifeproetv-project/

 
LIFE Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.09.2020 31.12.2022
EURAD - European Joint program on Radioactive Waste Management https://www.ejp-eurad.eu/ A step change in European collaboration towards safe RWM, including disposal, through the development of a robust and sustained science, technology and knowledge management programme that supports timely implementation of RWM activities and serves to foster mutual understanding and trust between Joint Programme participants.

By step-change we mean a new era via a more effective and efficient public RD&D funding in Europe, and a deepening of research-cooperation between Member States. The aim is to implement a joint Strategic Programme of research and knowledge management activities at the European level, bringing together and complementing EU Member State programmes in order to ensure cutting-edge knowledge creation and preservation in view of delivering safe, sustainable and publicly acceptable solutions for the management of radioactive waste across Europe now and in the future.

EURAD shall support the implementation of the Waste Directive in EU Member-States, taking into account the various stages of advancement of national programmes. National RWM programmes across Europe cover a broad spectrum of stages of development and level of advancement, particularly with respect to their plans and national policy towards implementing geological disposal. Programmes differ significantly depending on the national waste inventory, with some member states only responsible for relatively small volumes of medical and research reactor wastes, compared to others that have comparatively large and /or complex waste inventories from large nuclear power (and fuel reprocessing) and defence programmes. Programmes also differ significantly in the way in which they are managed, particularly with respect to the national policy and socio-political landscape with respect to longer-term storage and geological disposal.
Horizon 2020 Bojan Zajec 01.06.2019 31.05.2023
FRISSBE - Fire-safe Sustainable Built Environment https://www.frissbe.eu/
The FRISSBE project will implement new practices at the Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute, ZAG, by attracting and maintaining high-quality human resources under the direction of the ERA Chair holder. The project will lead to lasting, sustainable structural changes to achieve excellence at ZAG and spread excellence in the region. Designed structural changes aim to achieve excellence in the field of fire-safe sustainable built environments, modify ZAG's research and innovation landscape, intensify strong cooperation with industry and enhance competitiveness in attaining projects. Changes will be tested in a new autonomous unit, the FRISSBE ERA Chair, and transferable to ZAG as a whole.

Structural and dissemination measures are balanced with testing and improving the concept. Structural measures involve improving the workflow, focusing on project preparation and quality management, building a network with stakeholders, and intensifying cooperation with the industry. The concept will be tested on a few levels: testing the research enhancement process, building capacity in applying for competitive funds, and building sustainable relationships with industry. Dissemination activities focusing on two-way cooperation with identified stakeholders will enhance ZAGs network and positively contribute to its attractiveness.

FRISSBE will have regional impacts in terms of research, education, and engineering. The team will build a strong interactive ecosystem with the InnoRenew CoE and the University of Primorska, as well as other supporters of the project. The added value of the project is amplifying the capacities of the Fire laboratory co-financed with the support of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), ensuring conditions to foster excellent research. The project will yield 3 PhD students and 6 postdoctoral researchers. The long-term sustainability of the ERA Chair will be achieved by combining national and EU research and innovation funding with industry-funded research and development.
Horizon 2020 Andraž Legat 01.01.2021 31.12.2026
ComTraForce - Comprehensive traceability for force metrology services https://www.ptb.de/empir2019/comtraforce/project/overview/ EMPIR ComTraForce, project number 18SIB08
Internationally competitive high-tech products using highly efficient materials including carbon fibre, high tensile steel and concrete are present across the industy, from automotive, healthcare and construction sectors. In order to cover many different force measurement applications and to develop suitable calibration methods, for these applications, the project will develop methods and transfer standards for static, continuous and dynamic force calibration traceable to the SI in the range of 1 N to 1 MN, where currently, calibration for material testing is done statically and does not only disregard time and frequency influences but also lacks traceability. In accordance with the requirements of industry 4.0, force measuring devices will be developed and described by extended theoretical models which will result in digital replicas. Objectives: The overall aim of the project is to provide calibration services, in the field of mechanical and material testing, with the methods and guidelines needed for comprehensive traceability of static, continuous and dynamic force measurements.
EMPIR Miha Hiti 01.09.2019 28.02.2023
Metrology for the determination of emissions of dangerous substances from building materials into indoor air http://www.bam.de/metriaq Given that European citizens spend more than 80 % of their time indoors, it is vital to have a healthy indoor environment. To achieve this, the release of harmful substances from building materials, such as paints, flooring, and from other products used indoors, such as furniture, into the air must be minimised. The overall aim of the project is to develop traceable measurement of emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC) from such materials, by providing well-defined emission reference materials (ERM) and certified reference gas standards (gCRM), in accordance with the emission test chamber procedure described in EN 16516. The project results will support the efforts to minimise the use of building products, that emit dangerous substances, thereby ensuring improved indoor air quality. Miha Jukić 01.06.2021 30.06.2024
CROSScade - Cross-border cascading risk management for critical infrastructure in Sava river basin CROSScade deals with the analysis of cross-border risks of critical infrastructure in Sava river Basis near the border between Slovenia and Croatia, caused by earthquakes and floods, as well as their possible cascading sequence of events. The project is financed by Union Civil Protection Mechanism (GA No. 101048395) and focuses on the vulnerability analysis of flood protection system, hydropower plant dams and transport infrastructure, which is vital for critical infrastructure managers (CIMs) and civil protection agencies (CPAs) for planning disaster relief operations. The project will deliver a cross-border risk assessment methodology and action plans for increasing the structural resilience of critical infrastructure and for enhancing transboundary communication between CIMs and CPAs.
 
Union Civil Protection Mechanism Mirko Kosič 01.03.2022 29.02.2024
MEZeroE - Measuring Envelope systems for Zero Energy buildings MEZeroE is an EU distributed open innovation ecosystem for: developing nZEB Enabler Envelope technology solutions; transferring knowledge; matching testing needs with existing facilities; providing monitoring in living labs and; standardizing cutting-edge solutions coming from SMEs and larger industries, to foster inclusive change in the building sector, being accessible via a single-entry point to all users. MEZeroE allows the development of ground-based solutions focused on carbon neutrality and healthy indoor environment, validated with advanced assessment methods and services, recognized protocols and long-term vision to embrace industry 4.0 trends, rapid decision making and customer-centric requirements. Project accompanies enterprises in adopting the open innovation approach comprising of three phases: discovery, empowering and lastly exploiting. MEZeroE will be accessed via a single-entry point web-based multi-side virtual marketplace, including 9 Pilot Measurement & Verification Lines (PM&VL) and 3 Open Innovation Services (OIS) covering training, business model development, systematic IP and knowledge management. MEzeroE will fast-track prototypes to the market as fully characterized products Horizon 2020 Friderik Knez 01.01.2021 31.01.2026
EIT Urban Mobility RIS Hub Slovenia The main aim of the EIT Urban Mobility RIS Hub Slovenia is to support and encourage various stakeholders to actively participate within the activities that are offered by the KIC (Knowledge and Innovation Community) Urban Mobility and to enhance national innovation ecosystem in the realm of urban mobility. The EIT UM RIS Hub Slovenia is neutral facilitator between different stakeholders (e.g. national decision makers, cities, industry, research, education) and offer support to the entrepreneurs and trainings, including longlife learning for public servants in cities, experts, students and general public awareness raising. The strategic focus of the EIT Urban Mobility RIS Hub Slovenia is to: (1) significantly increase the visibility of the EIT Urban Mobility in Slovenia, (2) actively support and improve local business creation conditions, (3) encourage students and researchers to further evolve and improve their innovation ideas in order to accelerate the change towards a more sustainable urban mobility. EIT Raw Materials Anja Ilenič 01.01.2020 01.01.2023
Boosting waste recycling into valuable products by setting the environment for a circular economy in Slovenia LIFE IP RESTART project’s main objective is to deploy a holistic set of complementary technical, digital, environmental and social circular solutions to unlock all the potentials of the national Waste Management Programme and Waste Prevention Programme (WMPP) of the Republic of Slovenia. The aim of the project is to boost its implementation potential in order to achieve maximum material self-sufficiency and increase circular yield in the waste-to-resource sector. By demonstrating technical excellence through 6 circular pilots with validated environmental, economic, social, policy and governance added value, supported with a holistic digital systemic approach, nation-wide educational and awareness-raising campaign, LIFE IP RESTART’s main aim is to secure a full-fledged deployment of WMPP ensured by complementary actions enabling Slovenia’s transition into a material cycle-based refragmented circular society. In an intensive co-creative process between partners and a wide number of national, regional, and local stakeholders, LIFE IP RESTART aims to achieve the following Specific Objectives (S.O.), which are further divided into several Technical Objectives (T.O.); S.O.1: To provide a continuous WMPP assessment mechanism and ensure its ongoing improvement and actualisation based on digital, technical and social excellence established in LIFE IP RESTART; S.O.2: To demonstrate 6 circular solutions for several most problematic and voluminous waste streams addressed by WMPP (i.e. Demo 1: Production of topsoil for agricultural purposes and reclamation of mining areas; Demo 2: Recycling of dredging spoil from land waters; Demo 3: Preventing illegal dumping; Demo 4: Closing urban loops; Demo 5: Exploiting Secondary Raw Materials with Landfill Mining; Demo 6: New sources of Critical Raw Materials and recycling of sewage sludge) as best case examples for implementing WMPP objectives; and S.O.3: To ensure wider uptake of best available solutions and to achieve a coherent and integrated implementation of WMPP objectives.
 
LIFE programme and Republic of Slovenia Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.01.2022 31.12.2030
DIMESEE-2. Dubrovnik International ESEE Mining School - Implementing innovations https://dim-esee.eu/ DIM ESEE v.2 is a RIS lifelong learning (LLL) project focused on rising innovativeness within RM professionals in the ESEE region, having impact beyond and above the duration of the project. Targeted region lacks LLL courses for RM professionals (with the exception of obligatory, low-regulated educations for professionals related to safety, working in explosive environment etc.) whereas at the same time classical higher education system with outdated curricula have very little ability to follow development trends and adsorb new innovative and advanced tools and methodologies, reflecting in lower innovativeness rate of their students and alumnus – RM professionals.
The project lasts for 4 years and is developing four innovative workshops, 3 days each, for a total of 120+ professionals: Innovation in exploration (2021), Innovation in process-oriented orebody characterization (2022), Innovation in extraction (2023), and Innovation in ore processing (2024). Innovation workshops are going to be implemented in Interuniversity Centre of Dubrovnik. Participating RIS Universities will collaborate in preparation of the joint spin-off workshops for RM PhD and MSc students, using prepared materials of the primary Innovation workshops.
EIT Raw Materials Ana Mladenović 01.01.2021 31.03.2025
N2-0188 CO2 transformation to valuable chemicals by catalytic and photocatalytic ways over highly active materials https://www.fkkt.uni-lj.si/sl/raziskovalno-delo/raziskovalni-projekti-arrs/n2-0188/ CO2, a greenhouse gas, is considered to be largely responsible for the phenomenon of global warming and a cause of climate change. The conversion of CO2 into fuels or energy-rich products is an ideal approach to solve both CO2 emission and energy crisis problem. In fact, CO2 is abundant and non-toxic in low concentrations. Since it is inexpensive, this makes it a promising energy source.
 
The research activities of the proposed project are divided into 3 work packages (WPs) representing the specific objectives of the project:
WP1: Synthesis and characterization of catalysts and photocatalysts for the CO2 reduction based on materials with mesoporous mixed metal oxide and with heterojunction structure, respectively
WP2: Investigation of synthetized materials in the either CO2 catalytic or CO2 photocatalytic reduction
WP3: Deep understanding of the key parameters influencing the activity of investigated materials and generalization of the results
 
The main goal is to describe the fundamental facet of the effects on the activity of prepared materials in the CO2 transformation and to clarify the relationship between the activity, selectivity and stability of materials and their physico-chemical properties. The role of each partner is specified within detailed work packages description submitted to the lead agency. Roughly, Slovenian partners (UL and ZAG) will be responsible for the synthesis part, while the Czech partner (VŠB-TUO) will lead the characterization (structural and functional) part, supported by both Slovenian partners. VŠB-TUO has a long-term experience in the field of heterogeneous photocatalysis for environmental applications, on preparation of various types of nanoparticles, including testing of their functionality in photochemical reactions. UL has a complementary and strong expertise in wet chemical synthesis of metal oxide catalysts and their characterization in thin-film and powder form. ZAG has been researching photocatalysis on TiO2 and TiO2 related materials for more than a decade. Our collaboration clearly leads to a synergetic effect in the use of infrastructure, knowledge and skills.
 
Slovenian Research Agency SRA Andrijana Sever Škapin 01.03.2021 29.02.2024
GEOLAB, enhancing Europe’s Critical Infrastructure The existing Critical Infrastructure (CI) of Europe in the water, energy, urban and transport sector is facing major challenges on the impact of: (1) Climate change, and the increase of extreme weather and natural hazard events, (2) Aging and use long past the designed life span, and (3) Pivotal changes in the systems to meet long-term societal goals (e.g. energy transition). To address these challenges, solutions are needed that can only be achieved by an interdisciplinary, cross-boundary approach and by equipping expert teams with the most advanced suite of physical research infrastructure available that allow them to explore different theories and adopt innovative techniques. The GEOLAB research infrastructure consists of 11 unique installations in Europe capable of studying subsurface behaviour and the interaction with structures and the environment under various loading conditions. A large-scale triaxial apparatus at Section for Geotechnics ZAG is one of the research devices included in the project. It will enable the research team from ZAG to collaborate with researchers from abroad and use research infrastructure for various practical applications. Horizon 2020 Stanislav Lenart 01.02.2021 31.01.2025
RIS Education & Entrepreneurship RIS Education and Entrepreneurship KAVA is a centrally steered RIS activity to bring top-down orientation and boost impact and create activities building up capacity for higher education institutions in RIS regions to be able to successfully active partner in local ecosystem and be able to bring products to the market through their innovation activities.
 
The activities that are carried out on behalf of the RIS hubs by CLC E, CLC BS, CLC SI & partners & RIS task partners.
The main targets envisioned are:
- Primary and short term target: Raise the number of applicants from RIS countries into EIT RawMaterials main startup/entrepreneurship offerings (Jumpstarter, Booster, ACP)
- Primary and short-medium term target: Scout the relevant for the raw materials sector startups or idea holders in RIS countries that those exist; and/or develop-nurture the process to create potential entrepreneurs, in RIS countries where not even idea holders relevant to raw materials sector exist
- Secondary and medium-long term target: Build and/or enhance the innovation capacity of relevant to raw materials sector Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs)/Entrepreneur Support Service Offices (ESSOs) in RIS countries institutions/partners.
EIT Raw Materials Mateja Košir 01.01.2022 31.12.2022
RIS Internship programme: broadening University-Business Cooperation https://www.ris-internship.eu/ Overall objective of the project is to implement a Sustainable and structured RIS Internship Programme for East European (RIS) and EIT-RM- labelled MSc students, thus increasing students' entrepreneurial and business skills, broadening the University-Business Cooperation activities in the RIS region.
RIS Internship programme runs as an approved EIT RM KAVA project from the 1st of January 2022 until the end of 2024. The territorial coverage includes the initial pilot region (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia) and the new coming East European RIS countries:  Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
During the project, about 367 students will conduct an internship in 300 companies. At current rate of employment of 10% for the interns participating in the programme, we estimate that about 40 students will remain employed in the industry after their graduation. Train-the-trainer activities focused on 270 industry supervisors will additionally increase the entrepreneurship/business skills of the interns and broaden University-Business Cooperation (UBC) activities. The project will encourage employment of the RM graduates in the local industry and leverage brain drain in the ESEE region.
 
EIT Raw Materials Mateja Košir 01.01.2022 31.12.2024
NC-0017 Photocatalytic heterostructured nanomaterials for solar energy harvesting The rising concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is a growing concern due to its effects on climate and is considered as the leading cause of climate change. To mitigate the negative influence of greenhouse gases, it is imperative to reduce CO2 emissions and possibly reduce the existing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
Despite fossil fuels still being the leading energy source in the world, there is a trend towards the utilization of solar light. One of the ways to transform sunlight into energy is by chemical reduction of CO2 into energy-rich hydrocarbons via photocatalysts. To do this effectively, the photocatalysts have to be carefully tailored in various ways. Development of heterostructured materials is a promising way to utilize the advantages of different materials at once.
TiO2 as the base photocatalyst is an excellent choice due to its high activity, chemical stability and wide availability. To mitigate some of its drawbacks, such as a wide band gap, poor adsorption of CO2 on the surface of TiO2 particles, high recombination rate and non-selectivity, we propose to use CeO2 and Cu as cocatalysts. CeO2 is able to absorb light well into the visible light spectrum and can adsorb CO2 much better than TiO2 due to its basic and/or acidic surface properties. Cu nanoparticles are selective towards methanol production, exhibit surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect and act as electron sinks, thus reducing the recombination rate. By using TiO2 as base photocatalyst and CeO2 and Cu as cocatalysts, we intend to make a TiO2-CeO2-Cu heterostructures that will be capable of CO2 reduction at a higher rate than other materials. The properties of heterostructured materials have to be carefully controlled and variables such as particle size, particle size distribution, loading of cocatalysts, position of cocatalysts and cocatalyst influence on electronic structure will be observed.
The advancements of knowledge in understanding the processes during photocatalysis as well as in synthetic routes is crucial for the implementation of photocatalysts as means of solar energy harvesting and their storage in highly energetic hydrocarbons.
The use of novel materials as alternative source of fuel offers a way of utilizing solar energy in any energetic systems.
Slovenian Research Agency SRA Andrijana Sever Škapin 01.02.2021 31.07.2023
AshCycle - Integration of Underutilized Ashes into Material Cycles by Industry-Urban Symbiosis https://www.ashcycle.eu H-Europe - AshCycle - Integration of Underutilized Ashes into Material Cycles by Industry-Urban Symbiosis (University of UOLO-coordinator, 28 partners; 2022-2026)
The AshCycle project tackles the problem of waste generated from the incineration of municipal solid waste (MSW), biomass, sewage sludge or mixtures of these wastes for energy production. Currently, the ashes generated from these processes are under-utilised and mostly landfilled. The cost of ash disposal ranges from €100-500/t, and is expected to increase significantly with future increases due to the waste legislation.  The AshCycle project will develop and demonstrate new methods for extracting valuable elements from ashes, and further on on development of  construction products as well as waste water treatment products. Several pilot demonstrations are foreseen to validate the feasibility at (semi-)industrial stages and to contribute to increased resource efficiency and circularity.
ZAG is involved in most of the work packages, and the focus of our research is on the use of these ashes in the brick industry and in the production of lightweight aggregates and so-called "carbstone" technology. We are also leading WP6 (Environmental assessment, regulations, and standardisation) and a sub-working group on sequestration (T2.3 Carbon sequestration and storage capacity of ashes).
 
H-Europe Vilma Ducman 01.06.2022 01.06.2026
WEEE-NET9 - Improving CRMs extraction capacities in RIS WEEE recycling E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the EU, as well as a significant secondary source of valuable and scarce metals. WEEE-NET aims to take advantage of the untapped potential of East and Southeast Europe (ESEE) by lifting existing and persisting barriers, namely obsolete treatment technologies, lack of know-how on the part of the workforce, and insufficient penetration in secondary raw materials markets. The consortium comprises 11 partners from 5 RIS and 2 non-RIS countries (SI, PL, HU, GR, CZ, DE, BE), representing the entire WEEE value chain, who will work together to:
a) Foster the cross-fertilization of innovation, by transferring advanced WEEE management, processing and recovery technological solutions, tailored to the needs and realities of the region’s recycling industries;
b) Improve the networking capacities of businesses, research actors, and decision-makers, and promote business synergies through matchmaking, networking & capacity building events;
c) Spark entrepreneurship by encouraging investments and business development along the WEEE value chain, and delivering start-up and business support services;
d) Showcase financial gains for territorial economies through liaising with public authorities, improving the policy framework and overall collection performance in each partnership country;
e) Diffuse circular economy principles in the society, underlining the role of the EIT RM as a provider of opportunities for innovation.
EIT Raw Materials GmbH Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.09.2022 30.08.2024
LIFE IP RESTART - Boosting waste recycling into valuable products by setting the environment for a circular economy in Slovenia LIFE IP RESTART project’s main objective is to deploy a holistic set of complementary technical, digital, environmental and social circular solutions to unlock all the potentials of the national Waste Management Programme and Waste Prevention Programme (WMPP) of the Republic of Slovenia. The aim of the project is to boost its implementation potential in order to achieve maximum material self-sufficiency and increase circular yield in the waste-to-resource sector. By demonstrating technical excellence through 6 circular pilots with validated environmental, economic, social, policy and governance added value, supported with a holistic digital systemic approach, nation-wide educational and awareness-raising campaign, LIFE IP RESTART’s main aim is to secure a full-fledged deployment of WMPP ensured by complementary actions enabling Slovenia’s transition into a material cycle-based refragmented circular society. In an intensive co-creative process between partners and a wide number of national, regional, and local stakeholders, LIFE IP RESTART aims to achieve the following Specific Objectives (S.O.), which are further divided into several Technical Objectives (T.O.); S.O.1: To provide a continuous WMPP assessment mechanism and ensure its ongoing improvement and actualisation based on digital, technical and social excellence established in LIFE IP RESTART; S.O.2: To demonstrate 6 circular solutions for several most problematic and voluminous waste streams addressed by WMPP (i.e. Demo 1: Production of topsoil for agricultural purposes and reclamation of mining areas; Demo 2: Recycling of dredging spoil from land waters; Demo 3: Preventing illegal dumping; Demo 4: Closing urban loops; Demo 5: Exploiting Secondary Raw Materials with Landfill Mining; Demo 6: New sources of Critical Raw Materials and recycling of sewage sludge) as best case examples for implementing WMPP objectives; and S.O.3: To ensure wider uptake of best available solutions and to achieve a coherent and integrated implementation of WMPP objectives.
 
LIFE Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.01.2022 31.12.2030
CastQC - A novel cast ultra-high-specific strength quasicrystal aluminium alloy The high demand for aluminum alloys and the growing pressure to reduce their weight creates enormous market potential and encourages innovation in this area. The CastQC project focuses on a new alloy with a non-equilibrium quasi-crystalline (QC) phase that has 30% higher mechanical properties than the commercial EN AC-46000 (DIN 226) alloy and requires 30% less aluminum to achieve the same functionality and subsequently generates 20% less CO2 emissions. The main goal of the CastQC project is to reach TRL 8 and enter the market with a new QC alloy that will (partially) replace commercial Al-alloys, steels or even some Ti and Mg alloys. The QC alloy will bridge the gap in market demand for lightweight materials in the field of e-mobility and contribute to increasing the competitiveness of the European automotive industry. EIT RM Mateja Košir 01.09.2022 31.08.2024
CirCon4Climate - Circular Construction Practices for Climate Action The mission of the project is to contribute to climate change mitigation and security of supply in the construction sector by strengthening circular construction in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia, using best practices from Germany.
The project aims to increase the representation of circular building principles in public procurement, to encourage key players in the construction industry to use secondary materials and, finally, to increase the scale and volume of collection of materials for reuse and recycling, for example through regional material cadastres.
EUKI Janez Turk 01.12.2022 30.03.2025
GEORIS-KAVA9 - Innovative technologies for waste processing in ESEE Region The University of KULueven (BE) and ENALOS (GR) have developed a geopolymerisation technology consisting of a modular, mobile unit that can be packed in a container and transported to a site for the production of high value-added materials. These new materials can be used in various sectors, such as construction and the automotive industry (catalytic converter parts). In Slovenia, paving stones will be produced in this way at SIJ Akroni, Gorenjska gradbena družba will install them at a demo site, and ZAG will be involved, among other things, in technical support for the pilot production and in the testing of the resulting products. EIT RM Vilma Ducman 01.09.2022 30.08.2024
INFRACOMS - Innovative & Future-proof Road Asset Condition Monitoring Systems Effective and efficient road asset management relies on the availability and timely exchange of information to support robust decisions on maintenance needs. In recent years there has been significant progress in the development of technology, providing the opportunity to improve and enhance asset management decisions through the use of new sensing technologies for data collection, and advanced techniques in data processing to convert data into information to enrich asset management systems. These new technologies, such as remote sensing, satellite monitoring, crowdsourcing, V2I/I2V communications, advanced data processing and Internet of Things (IoT) etc. are now gradually making their way into asset management within road administrations. This presents a number of challenges for current and future asset management processes. With this rapid technological changes, National Road Authorities (NRAs) face considerable challenges: Understanding which technology or set of technologies will add value and bring efficiency in managing their assets; interpreting the data in an efficient and robust manner that meets their asset management objectives; integrating the data with suitable visualisation and decision support tools; and evaluating the wider implications of adapting these technologies in terms of cost, safety, social and environment components.
To find a practical solution to these challenges and enable European National Road Authorities (NRAs) to implement innovative technologies and approaches as standard practice, Conference of European Directors of Road (CEDR) have called for research in 2021 with a specific focus on two primary asset types: road pavements and bridges. Project INFRACOMS, a two year long project, will provide NRAs with a database of remote monitoring technology, appraised in terms of its technical capability and application. INFRACOMS will also provide a flexible, sustainable and future-proofed appraisal toolkit which will enable NRAs to continue to appraise emerging technologies, an action plan, in the form of a roadmap, and maturity assessment tool for implementation of technologies within road administrations.
CEDR Darko Kokot 01.07.2022 30.06.2024
STILLMETAL - Sustainable sLag process to obtain a valuable METAL STILLMETAL project develops a sustainable process to convert foundries slag into ferroalloys. It solves the problem of slag landfill disposal, transforming a cost into a revenue and increasing competiveness and independence from raw materials supply. Know-how belongs to OPIGEO (SME specialized in slag valorisation), to UNIPD and ZAG, whereas ITALGHISA (SME ferrolloys leading supplier) possesses trade secret. ZEROCENTO will be the 1st customer building the industrial plant (TRL9).
Cast iron foundry companies produce an average of 1.000 tons/year of slag (500.000 tons/year in Italy; 5 million tons/years in Europe) that’s now disposed of in landfill with a cost of 25€/tons. The project aims to valorise the slag through a process, sustainable from both technical and economical point of view, able to transform it into valuable materials. This process involves the reaction at high temperatures, in the molten state, between the slag and specific added materials to give a metal and a residual oxide slag. The added materials are either home or new or old scraps rich in Si and old scraps of Al. The obtained metal has a composition of a Ferroalloy, a valuable alloy of iron with silicon, that can be sold or reused inside the same foundry for the production of new cast iron, whereas the residual oxide slag, despite being a slag, possesses a right composition, a mix of oxides of aluminium, silicon and alkali, to have a market value for ceramic and/or cement industry. The process has already been tested at TRL5 and during the project a process at TRL9 will be realized and installed in a cast iron foundry. The process will contribute to improve both the cost saving (reducing to zero the waste management) and the resource and energy efficiency (producing ferroalloy from slag) of cast iron foundries.
EIT RM 11.07.2022 31.12.2024
CO2TREAT- Accelerated CO2 Treatment of alkaline residues for low carbon binders The main aim of the CO2TREAT project is to design resource-efficient, low-carbon binder products for durable concrete and civil
engineering applications by partially substituting Portland cement with secondary resources beneficiated by treatment with
CO2. Considering circular design, the project targets to narrow material loops and increase resource-efficiency by substituting
primary resources, scarce resources or products with a high carbon footprint by carbon-negative alternatives.
ERA MIN Ana Mladenović 01.05.2022 30.04.2025
BIM4CE - Bridge monitoring using real-time data and digital twins for Central Europe The project BIM4CE aims to develop a standardized, cost-effective, scalable solution for monitoring ageing bridge infrastructure in Central Europe using real-time data and digital twins.
 
BIM4CE will design a generalized solution for bridge management that is effective enough to help its operators in terms of maintenance decisions yet not too complex and cost intensive. The project explicitly focuses on the scalability of the developed solution. It will consist of hardware and software for data gathering, connectivity infrastructure, data analysis, data storage and decision management. BIM4CE will build on knowledge generated in previous projects. Therefore, the solution will be a mix of already-proven technology and innovative technology (e.g. sensor foils based on organic electronics, digital twin models) that best meet the needs of bridge owners and operators in central Europe. This will help public authorities and infrastructure providers on local, regional, and national level to keep road infrastructure safe.
 
The approach and solutions proposed in BIM4CE will be designed to be also applicable to important assets outside of the examined geographical area and will thus have a wider benefit to the whole European Union.
 
INTERREG CENTRAL EUROPE Mirko Kosič 01.04.2022 30.03.2025
EXFires - Exploration Fire Safety The present assumptions of safety based on normal gravity tests and protocols and extrapolated to microgravity or partial gravity on the basis of modelling tools have been demonstrated to carry significant uncertainty. Furthermore, all existing modelling tools that enable extrapolation of empirical results to real microgravity or partial gravity performance have been challenged by the emergence of phenomena normally ignored because they are masked by buoyancy. The work conducted on smaller samples and for shorter experimental durations has shown that fire behaviour in low-gravity is very different from that in normal-gravity, with differences observed for flammability limits, spread behaviour, flame colour and flame structure. Therefore, the goal of EXFires is on material flammability and fire tests in microgravity at an appropriate scale to understand the microgravity fire science sufficiently for adequate safety design and model development. 
 
The principal impact of the EXFires project will be the production of a complete and unique set of data that enables the development of forecasting tools for a holistic fire safety design for future space missions. As the focus is on longer, human flights, input data for model development will be generated through studies of the flammability of materials in enhanced oxygen environments in microgravity and partial gravity. This will be facilitated through a series of ground-based microgravity, partial gravity and normal-gravity experiments that will maximise the return of scheduled ESA/NASA flight experiments, and experiments conducted in the facilities of European National Space agencies (CNES & ZARM).
ESA- EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY Grunde Jomaas 01.10.2022 01.10.2024
ReBuilt - Circular and digital renewal of central Europe construction and building sector https://www.interreg-central.eu/projects/rebuilt/ The construction industry heavily contributes to resource consumption, waste generation, and greenhouse gas emissions. The adoption of circular and digital practices can help reduce the environmental impact of the sector. For this reason  the transition into circular economy in this sector produces significant impact on Central European society well-being and increase its resource efficiency. The current situation of innovation ecosystems for circular and digital construction vary significantly from region to region. Some regions already have good practices in the use of recycled materials, well-established administrative procedures such as End-of-Waste criteria, others are in the phase of the initial steps towards circular and digital construction. There are common gaps to all regions, such as a general reluctance to secondary raw material(SRM)-based products; lack of appropriate data about the quality of SRM-based products and their traceability (waste to product flows); the lack of administrative/legal pathways for product re-use; the lack of good practices of circular economy business models; the lack of a transnational training programme for professionals. In addition to ZAG as lead partner and 13 partners from SI,  IT, AT, HR, HU, SK, PL, CZ, DE, and 6 associated partners from SI, HU and DE participate in the project. All partners will contribute to implementation  of the objectives and results of the ReBuilt project:   i) to increase awareness and attractiveness of circular and digital construction through creation of education programme; ii) upgrade and piloting of new solutions (technical and digital); iii) upgrade demandside  measures, including green labeling, End of Waste, Green Public Procurement and through creation of first Central European Circular and Digital Construction Strategy which will be deployed through  network of Regional Circular and Digital Construction Hubs. The project outputs and results will further uptake construction in central Europe, taking into consideration regional and urban/rural specifics. INTERREG CENTRAL EUROPE Alenka Mauko Pranjić 01.04.2023 31.03.2026
INDY - Energy independent and efficient deployable military camps Both at national and international levels, energy transition is high on the priority list. In line with the Green Deal, the greening of military forces is necessary to reach the ambition defined by Member States. At the moment, deployable military camps are almost 100% dependent on fossil fuel. This not only means that the environmental footprint is high but it also represents a weak point and vulnerability for the armed forces in terms of logistics and dependence on fossil fuels. This is becoming even more challenging given the growing need of energy for the military equipment.
 
The INDY project will be the first step to increase the security of energy supply and autonomy of deployable military camps and support their full transition towards implementation of renewable energy sources with the use of new disruptive technologies and solutions for future military camps. The roadmap shall seek to reduce
the usage of fossil fuel by 40% in 2030 compared to the present situation and to reach 100% fossil fuel independency in 2050.
EUROPEAN DEFENCE FUND Wilson Ulises Rojas Alva 01.12.2022 30.11.2024
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