Activities and opportunities of cooperation with chemical regions of the S3P industrial partnership

Submitted by Tedora Aibu on 08 July 2020

Summary of the European Alliance Against Coronavirus Daily Webinar on 7 July 2020. 

Esteban Pelayo from EURADA opened the morning session on activities and opportunities of cooperation with chemical regions of the S3P industrial partnership. He introduced the European Chemical Regions Network and three different projects from important European chemical region.

The European Chemical Regions Network (ECRN), presented by Monika Banka, started as an INTERREG project in 2004, with the idea to bring chemical regions from all over Europe together in order to tackle challenges, exchange information and explore solutions. Important actions of ECRN are: (i) give a single voice of the chemical regions' interests, (ii) foster interregional cooperation, (iii) create regional knowledge exchange, and (iv) facilitate the projects’ participation. Moreover, ECRN plans several events to deliver the European Green Deal and accelerate the industry’s transition focused on three themes: (i) fuel for future, (ii) regional solutions to upscale the bio-based chemical production in Europe, and (iii) closing the loop in chemical recycling. The main stakeholders involved are regional public authorities, industry, research, and financial institutions.

Mattia Adani from Nowal Chimica (Lombardy Region) presented the Bi-Rex project, that is related to a process for biomass recovery and extraction developed with Polihub of Politecnico di Milano. Currently, cellulose is manufactured from trees. The vision is to manufacture competitive tree-free cellulose in an eco-sustainable way, using spent agri-food biomasses by using re-usable eco-sustainable solvents called Deep Eutectic Solvents. The project is validated by several entities with the aim to develop an industrial plant to produce cellulose with agri-food biomasses. Europe imports raw materials from other continents, but plays a pivotal role in cellulose global trade, especially in the production of cellulose-based objects that is worth 200 billion €.

 Following, Lia Voermans from Limburg Region presented the Chamelot Circular Hub, which is the first large-scale Circular Hub in Europe connected to Green Deal Agenda. The idea is to develop a new value chains with energy transition, circular raw materials and circular products. They use their innovative chemistry as a growth accelerator for the transformation to a sustainable economy and a socially prosperous future with the investment of government, industry, knowledge institutes and citizens in the largest chemical area in the world.

Maria Dolors Núnez from ACCIÓ presented the Flow Chemistry interregional hub and a brief overview of the chemical sector in Eurpe. Flow chemistry is the development and study of chemical reactions whereby reactants are combined by pumping fluids, including solutions of reagents, though tubes at known rates and a controlled temperature. She presented how flow chemistry/process intensification can potentially reduce the number of steps in a synthesis, thereby resulting in a greener process.

Some relevant bottlenecks of the projects has been highlighted: funding resources, involved private companies and finding new collaborators, determinate the role of Region.

A recording of the session is available here 

These are the complete minutes of the meeting: 

20200707 ECA dailyminutes_v2.pdf

Find information on the previous meetings hereinformation on the upcoming agenda here 

Photo by thisisengineering-raeng on Unsplash

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