Circular Economy

The CORALIS guidelines address financing and risk mitigation for Industrial Symbiosis (IS) projects, offering a structured process to enhance stakeholder relationships, align with regulatory frameworks, and improve project implementation for sustainable industrial operations.

The CORALIS project examines data exchange in industrial symbiosis networks, identifying lack of standardization and proposing a structured communication framework to improve trust, efficiency, and innovation for sustainable industrial practices.

The article addresses the importance of structured business agreements in industrial symbiosis (IS), categorizing IS relationships by engagement level and outlining key considerations for agreements including ownership, responsibilities, liabilities, risk management, governance, contractual terms, and adaptability based on the CORALIS project.

This study explores the circular economy's waste-to-resource concept and analyzes startups impacting it. Key trends include waste upcycling, IoT-optimized waste management, AI-powered sorting, and blockchain for traceability. Circular economy startups are prominent in Western Europe, with growing activity in the US and Asia, particularly China and India.

The innovative Heat Pipe Condensing Economiser (HPCE) has been successfully commissioned at Alufluor AB in Sweden, demonstrating that significant heat, water, and material recovery is possible using current materials and knowledge. This milestone marks a major advancement in energy savings in the chemical process industry, showcasing the potential for substantial gains beyond incremental improvements. The project involved considerable engineering and infrastructure investment, leading to an operational capacity of 650kW from exhaust recovery since August 1st, and is applicable across various industries, particularly in regulated sectors.

CircularPSP, a Horizon Europe-funded project, unites eight cities to transition to a Circular Economy, addressing sustainability by investing €5.64 million in R&D. It fosters municipal innovation through AI, collaboration, a follower network, and hosts events discussing circularity challenges and solutions.

EnerWhizz, launched by EEIP, is a mobile quiz game promoting energy innovation knowledge through fast-paced yes-or-no questions. Top scorers win monthly prizes. The game, based on the EU-funded EENOVA project, aims to educate on energy transition technologies, policies, and best practices.

The ceramics industry in Europe has made significant progress in energy optimization, cutting consumption by half in 25 years. Challenges persist, including reliance on carbon-emitting methane burners and raw material imports. Innovations and regulatory measures aim to decrease emissions and resource waste, promoting sustainable manufacturing across the sector's 338,000 jobs and €27.8 billion contribution to the EU economy.

Mafalda Silva is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Science and Innovation in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. She has participated and managed multiple projects concerning energy planning and sustainability. Silva has developed a heat and cold matching platform that determines the costs and benefits related to excess heat utilization routes for the industry and end users.