Energy efficiency breakthroughs in the process industries (Processes4Planet partnership) (RIA) -

Expected Outcome

Projects outcomes will enable achievement of the objectives of Processes4Planet partnership by designing and digitising industrial processes for a maximum energy efficiency, ensuring process flexibility and capturing the full potential of renewable energy (related to P4Planet operational objectives 1 and 5).

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Increase the energy efficiency of energy intensive industrial processes by reducing energy use by at least 30% and the process as compared to current state of the art;
• Enable the techno-economic feasibility of novel technologies and processes, validated and demonstrated at suitable scale against state of the art of industrial processes;
• Enable the potential of an increased use of renewable energy;
• Contribute to achieving EU climate neutrality goal and becoming independent from fossil fuel and fossil fuel imports as put forward in the REPowerEU Plan[1].

Scope

To decarbonise the energy-intensive industries both, the availability of affordable renewable energy, and the increase of the industrial processes energy efficiency, will be needed. Today‘s energy efficiency improvements in conventional plants are about 1-2% annually. The use of digital technologies in process optimisation has the potential to further reduce this energy demand. However, digital technologies alone cannot achieve the required change in the process industries’ energy efficiency, the combination of digital technologies with highly energy efficient process breakthroughs is required.

Proposals under this topic should:

• Focus on the development of highly efficient technological breakthroughs for the innovation of the most energy intensive parts of specific processes;
• Demonstrate the decrease in energy intensity of output level (intermediate, final product);
• Integrate novel digital technologies from the fields of distributed process control and data driven AI based optimisation;
• Demonstrate and evaluate energy efficiency gains, where relevant in optimal interaction with energy flexibility and integration of renewables.

The proposals should include energy efficiency, techno-economic and life-cycle assessments considering the overall process.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination.

Proposals should build on or seek collaboration with existing projects and develop synergies with other relevant European, national or regional initiatives, funding programmes and platforms. Proposals are encouraged to consider outcomes from the projects carried out in the call DT-SPIRE-06-2019: Digital technologies for improved performance in cognitive production plants.

This topic implements the co-programmed European partnership Processes4Planet.

Activities are expected to start at TRL 4 and achieve TRL 6 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

[1]COM/2022/230 final

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