ExpectedOutcome:
Advanced membrane materials are essential to achieve the goals of the European Green Deal with significant reductions of industrial emissions in waste streams like wastewater and waste gas like removal of gas / volatile pollutants from liquid emissions or purification of wastewater.
Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:
- The next generation membrane materials, delivering smart solutions for greening of industrial plants;
- Advanced membrane materials for recycling of waste streams from industrial plants to support the Zero Pollution strategy;
- Better materials with outstanding separation performance and/or superior properties either in chemical, mechanical or thermal stability compared to commercial materials;
- Reduction of the water footprint of 10% in industrial plants for the preservation of freshwater resources;
- Up-scaling the desalination process by solar powered membrane distillation systems and coupling membrane distillation with solar / photovoltaic collectors;
- Energy saving by 10% through the application of a new generation of membranes.
- End-of-life issues
Scope:
Membranes separation is one of the key process elements needed for the next level of resource efficiency and for greener industrial plants. Proposals will address the development of the new generation membrane materials from gas separation to membrane contactors in comparison to the current state-of-the-art. Guidance by modelling and simulation techniques should be provided to save on extensive experimentation and support up-scaling.
Proposals should address at least two of the following activities:
- Advanced membrane materials for the recovery of valuable components (ammonia, phosphate, alcohols, reactants, products, catalysts) from aqueous, organic and mixed aqueous/organic process and waste streams to enhance the resource efficiency in industrial plants;
- Separating gas streams (e.g. CO2 utilisation processes) in the process emissions by using membrane technologies, where in addition to the produced product, other gases are in the stream (e.g. unreacted CO2 and hydrogen);
- Demonstrate the next generation of porous membranes for membrane contactors (membrane distillation, gas/liquid contactors, liquid/liquid contactors) with use of renewable energy sources (solar energy or waste heat) to achieve significant reduction in CAPEX and process costs of gas separations and distillation;
- Up-scaling the desalination process by solar powered membrane distillation systems by coupling membrane distillation with solar / photovoltaic collectors;
- New membrane materials to reduce the water footprint in industrial plants for the preservation of freshwater resources (e.g solvent tolerant reverse osmosis membranes, forward osmosis).
Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination.
This topic is open for international cooperation where the EU has reciprocal benefit, while excluding industrial competitors from countries where the safeguarding of IPRs cannot be guaranteed.
Specific Topic Conditions:
Activities are expected to start at TRL 4 and achieve TRL 7 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.
Cross-cutting Priorities:
Artificial IntelligenceDigital AgendaInternational Cooperation
