Innovative advanced materials and new production processes - reducing dependencies on Critical and Strategic Raw Materials (IA) (Innovative Advanced Materials for the EU and Processes4Planet partnerships)

Expected Outcome

• Reducing dependencies of critical and strategic raw materials through partial or total substitution by safe and sustainable innovative advanced materials and/or via more efficient use of critical and strategic raw materials in production processes;
• Speeding up the innovation cycle within value chain(s) important for European industry;
• Enhancing competitiveness of the industries and operational costs, while making supply chains more secure;
• New or improved production processes, innovative advanced materials and products that are safer and more sustainable, supporting a clean and autonomous economy; and
• Demonstrating how the safe and sustainable by design (SSbD) chemicals and materials framework can guide innovation.

Scope

The focus of this topic is on alternatives for the substitution or more efficient use of critical and strategic raw materials[1]. The design and development of innovative advanced materials (IAMs) and processes should lead to an innovation cycle covering the (re)design of materials and production processes, and the integration of IAMs into products.

Proposals should develop IAMs or process technologies to replace or reduce the use of critical and strategic raw materials in strategic areas and sectors such as energy, mobility, construction, electronics, medical devices or chemical industries.

Proposals should address one or several of the following approaches:

• Design, development and production with targets on performance, safety and sustainability of IAMs substituting or making a more efficient use of critical and strategic raw materials.
• Innovative industrial processes for the reduction of the use of critical and strategic raw materials focussed on optimizing process safety, sustainability, flexibility, scalability, cost-efficiency.
• Co-development strategies for IAMs and industrial processes. These strategies should demonstrate the value of co-development through specific use cases while maintaining broad relevance across various materials and process types.

Proposals should demonstrate clear use case(s), market and potential to grow. The substitution barriers for the selected applications should be identified and a driving mechanism for a maximal substitution in the targeted value chains proposed.

The scope includes necessary adaptations of related processes and technologies to ensure alignment with and integration in industrial manufacturing in order to facilitate the uptake of the developed solutions. If relevant, challenges for the adaption of existing production lines should be identified and solutions proposed.

Proposals should demonstrate that SSbD framework[2] will be applied throughout the innovation process, showing that safety and sustainability principles are actively integrated and influence decision-making in a transparent and traceable way, and ensure that the data generated within the proposal may be shared with the Common Data Platform for Chemicals. The new alternatives to be developed should meet the technical functions required in the specific applications while aligning their innovation process decision making with such framework.

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

Proposals are encouraged to cooperate with relevant projects. Where relevant, proposals should actively contribute to and cooperate with the EU Innovation and Substitution Hub(s)[3]. Proposals should allocate the necessary resources to the proposed activities

This topic implements the co-programmed European partnerships Innovative Advanced Materials for the EU (IAM4EU) and Processes4Planet.

Technology Readiness Level - Technology readiness level expected from completed projects

Activities are expected to start at TRL 5 and achieve TRL 7 by the end of the project - see General Annex B.

[1] https://rmis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/eu-critical-raw-materials; as well as Annex I and II of the

[2] See documents defining the SSbD framework on: https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/research-area/industrial-research-and-innovation/key-enabling-technologies/advanced-materials-and-chemicals_en

[3] European Chemicals Industry Action Plan - European Commission