On February 7, Rosalba Passalacqua, Associate Professor of Industrial Chemistry at the University of Messina in Italy & Consortium INSTM UdR Messina (CASPE laboratory) gave a presentation on the Electrification of the chemical industry to the students at the secondary school Liceo Leonardo da Vinci located in Reggio Calabria.
As part of the online seminar within the activity of Pathways for Transversal Skills and Orientation, PERFORM was showcased as case example.
You can check here the full presentation (Italian).
Read MorePERFORM (PowER platFORM) was selected as a finalist for the EU Sustainable Energy Awards (EUSEW Awards) 2021 in the Innovation category, together with LIFE-DIADEME and RenOnBill.
Winners were announced in an online awards ceremony, held on October 25 at 12 (CEST) and finally it was LIFE-DIADEME who took the prize.
The EU Sustainable Energy Awards recognise outstanding individuals and projects for their innovation in energy efficiency and renewable solutions. Finalists are chosen from a shortlist of the year’s most successful projects for clean, secure, and efficient energy.
In concrete, the Innovation category recognises outstanding EU-funded activities that show an original and innovative path toward the clean energy transition.
Prizes are divided into four categories (engagement, innovation, woman in energy, young energy trailblazer) and awarded by an expert jury and by European citizens via a public vote.
Read MoreFrom 2 to 3 September 2020, Novamont attended the phygital event Cibus Forum at the Parma exhibition centre. The Cibus platform represent a moment of exchange and sharing for the agri-food community.
During the event Perform brochure (around 50) were distributed at Novamont’s booth.
Read MoreOn October 28, RadiciGroup, responsible for Product Applications, participated in an online seminar to present the PERFORM project.
The Italian Industry embraces Green Chemistry workshop was organised by Gruppo Interdivisionale di Green Chemistry della SCI, CNR-SCITEC and Consorzio Italbiotec and the presentations addressed the new European Green Deals related to chemistry.
On behalf of the PERFORM consortium, Stefano Alini, CEO and Innovations and Research Director at RadiciGroup presented the main goals of the project to date.
Read MoreInterview to Román Sánchez, Marketing Manager at Sustainable Innovations
Q: What are the main strategies behind the exploitation and the dissemination of the project?
A: Sustainable innovations will develop the exploitation & dissemination strategies in PERFORM focusing on the Key Exploitable Results (KERs) of the project
Sustainable Innovation is conducting the necessary assessments to ensure the most efficient market uptake, including the market analysis, recommended exploitation paths and IPR management for every KER. Besides, it is managing the dissemination of the results to the key stakeholders & the general audience through the most appropriate channels, with the final aim of maximizing the adoption of PERFORM innovations.
PERFORM will ultimately contribute to the sustainability & competitiveness of the chemical industry across Europe by substituting fossil-based feedstocks by its biobased alternatives and applying paired electrosynthesis to the chemical transformation processes, and that objective will be achieved thanks to the dissemination & exploitation activities that are being designed.
Read MoreInterview to Giuseppina Carotenuto, Research & Development Manager at Novamont
Q: How is Novamont going to carry out the product formulations?
A: In the context of the development of bioeconomy, the sustainable production of biobased materials is a critical success factor for the long-term perspective to implement bio-based products on a large scale.
PERFORM projects is expected to contribute to technology development to reduce the environmental impact of the chemical industry. The implementation of electrochemical production methods for bio-based building blocks for performance products will be a game changer, leading to more efficient and sustainable production of chemicals.
Novamont promotes an approach to bioeconomy based on the efficient use of renewable resources. Our mission is to develop materials and biochemicals through the integration of chemistry and agriculture, by starting up biorefineries in the local areas and providing application solutions that ensure efficient use of resources throughout their entire life cycle, with advantages for the social, economic and environmental system.
The use of renewable raw materials is one of the qualifying elements of Novamont’s biodegradable and compostable bioplastics and we are working to progressively increase the renewable content of our products.
Within the Perform project, we have the possibility of creating and testing new bio-based and biodegradable polyesters using dicarboxylic acids from electrochemical processes with an improved environmental profile due to the efficient utilization of renewable biobased feedstocks and renewable energy.
In particular Novamont will validate the quality and the usability of Perform’s dicarboxylic acids in the production of bio-based polymers. In this case is essential to have a high purity index of the monomers, aimed at obtaining materials with mechanical and physical properties in line with Novamont’s target. First of all, laboratory trials will be performed to test the PERFORM biochemicals for the synthesis of bio-based polyesters to screen purity profiles. Then the most suitable formulations will be selected for the validation at pilot scale to get a wider and more comprehensive knowledge on the production process.
Read MoreInterview to Cristiano Maesani, Junior Researcher at RadiciGroup
Q: How does RadiciGroup foresees the process benchmarking and product applications of the PERFORM technology?
A: RadiciGroup is one of the most important player in the production of adipic acid, one of the target product of PERFORM project. Nowadays, adipic acid is synthetized only from fossil source raw material, which involves a nitric acid oxidation of the mixture cyclohexanol – cyclohexanone. The low final cost of this chemical intermediate and the very high purity required for its downstream applications (>99,8% by weight) make this synthetic route the only one possible at industrial scale.
Researchers from all over the world have been working for 50 years to study new processes able to remove nitric acid from the production pathway. The new and innovative adipic acid synthesis proposed in the PERFORM project not only removes the nitric acid as reactant, which would allow to have safer chemical plants and less subjected to corrosion problems, but also uses sugars from biomass as starting raw materials and renewable energy, embracing the philosophy of sustainability that characterizes RadiciGroup vision. This new approach aligned with the European Energy Policy and based on renewable feedstock should also allow to achieve a significant improvement of the product environmental footprint.
Unfortunately, adipic acid market quality requirements are very strict, especially in polyamides synthesis, which covers more than 60% of its uses. Even small amounts of mono carboxylic acids, metals ions or UV-vis adsorbent molecules could make the product unsuitable for its downstream applications. For this reason, in order to achieve a result never reached in the chemical industry, it is fundamental to well design the whole process, from the right selection and pre-treatment of the raw material, passing through the high conversion and selectivity inside the electrochemical pair reactor and finally to the correct choice of unit operations in the downstream process for the removal of the critical impurities.
RadiciGroup will guide its partners towards the benchmark adipic acid by chemical analysing the product obtained, highlighting the critical parameters that should be improved to obtain an adipic acid whose quality is as similar as possible to the one coming from fossil source. In parallel to this, polymerization tests will be done on laboratory and pilot plant to produce polyamide 66, the most critical application of adipic acid. The nylon thus obtained will be afterwards tested in plastic molding and yarn spinning pilot plant, establishing if the adipic acid obtained in the PERFORM project would have a real market or not.
Read MoreQ: Which are the milestones achieved till date that you would highlight?
A: Electrochemical conversion has a potential to combine use of renewable electricity and renewable resources, such as biomass, to contribute to transition towards more sustainable chemical industry. PERFORM projects aims to develop a Perform Power Platform, where feasibility of two electrochemical transformation routes to make value added chemicals from biobased sources will be demonstrated. The Power Platform will be a flexible system where, in the future, other electrochemical conversion routes can be tested and help in brining electrochemical conversion technologies closer to implementation.
Read MoreThe PERFORM partners have been busy these last 6 months!
Discover here the laboratory videos, the events attended and more!
Read More