Materials & Manufacturing
What we make
Innovations across the whole life cycle and value chain of materials and products we make and use. Advances in primary materials, intermediate and end products, manufacturing processes and supply chain traceability that directly or indirectly reduce carbon emissions, are resource efficient, and valorize waste and by-products through circular material flows.
Novel Materials
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Innovative materials and chemicals with a low carbon footprint and sustainable land use, high performance materials with superior longevity and robustness and materials that facilitate lower resource and energy use for carbon intensive sectors such as energy, mobility, infrastructure, chemical & industrial processes, packaging and textiles.
Biomaterials:
Materials generated from a renewable and sustainable bio-based source (including low or carbon negative plant, fungi and algae sources and by-products) as well as waste streams (such as urban and agricultural biowaste and waste-water sludge) and via microbial and enzymatic processes.
Biodegradable Materials:
Innovations in biodegradability of polymers whilst ensuring high performance of properties vital to applications.
Low Emission Enablers:
Materials that their incorporation into products facilitates lower operational emissions (e.g. lightweight composites and novel catalysts) or material efficiency (i.e. enabling a lesser amount of material to be used whilst retaining the same function, such as a reinforcement material).
Technology Enablers:
Novel materials that are imperative to a climate-tech breakthrough that enable its implementation. e.g. novel conductors that lower the working temperature of a fuel cell or phase change materials for thermal storage.
Novel Refrigerants:
Next generation non-hazardous refrigerants with low greenhouse warming potential.
Clean Manufacturing
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Improvements and optimization, through both software and hardware, of industrial production processes and system maintenance that minimize energy and resource use, and reduce waste at the plant level.
Process Innovation:
Innovations that reduce the energy intensity of production and conditioning processes such as separation, filtration, drying, chemical and plasma synthesis. Material Substitution and additive manufacturing,
Resource Efficiency:
Optimization of operating parameters and implementation of predictive maintenance leading to reduced use of energy, water, fluids and materials, elimination of waste that results from overproduction, overprocessing and defects, product design to increase manufacturing efficiency.
Resource Recovery:
Implementation of advanced recovery and recycling for materials, Recovery of low temperature waste heat and water from cooling towers.
Circularity
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Innovations in materials, processes, infrastructure and connectivity between stakeholders that enable materials, components, products, by-products and waste (biomass and inert) to be kept in use, recovered, recycled or regenerated in a circular system, such that waste generation is minimized and resource use is optimized.
Product Design:
Designing with attributes that support circularity such as longevity, durability, biodegradability, recyclability, modularity and disassembly.
Waste:
Innovations in sorting, recycling and recovery processes and infrastructure for optimal conversion and utilization of waste (biomass and inert materials) for the production of new raw materials.
Resource Transparency:
Connecting between economic as well as civic players. Tracer technologies (physical, digital or biological) that allow to identify a product and capture, store, share and analyze data throughout its lifecycle, enabling trading, industrial symbiosis, recycling and in general, exchange of data between stakeholders leading to material valorization.
Transparent & Agile Supply Chains
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Technologies, data analytics and decision making tools to achieve energy efficiency and waste minimization as well as transparency and agility with regard to emissions, climate risk and land degradation across the entire supply chain operation.
Traceability:
Traceability with respect to, amongst other materials, metals, plastic, and materials connected to deforestation and changes in land use and for attribution of GHG emissions to material flow across supply chain networks.
Value Chain Optimization:
Tools for real-time, predictive intelligence into supply chain activity such as supply and demand planning in order to reduce overproduction, material flow analysis to reduce material resources and waste.
Distribution:
Facilitating collaborative shipping and synchromodality, effective reverse logistics, low carbon warehouse and logistics management.
Carbon Capture & Utilization
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Capture of atmospheric carbon using engineered and hybrid (engineered & natural based) processes, and its utilization to generate novel materials with a net negative carbon impact, or alternatively, its permanent storage.
Capture:
Innovative materials and energy efficient methods for carbon capture with high selectivity and high conversion, also at atmospheric concentrations (Direct Air Capture).
Transformation:
Process innovations for chemical and biological transformation of CO2 into value-added products, e.g. production of bio-oils, specialty chemicals, polymers, fuels and construction material.
