Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment is considered to increase drastically in the coming decades. WEEE contains considerable quantities of valuable components used in high-tech applications that currently are not recycled. Europe needs to improve and develop Recovery, Recycling and Reuse of critical materials in order to avoid the dependency on imports, high prices and risk of supply imposed by countries owning mineral reserves. RECYVAL-NANO project will develop an innovative recycling process for recovery and reuse of indium, yttrium and neodymium metals from Flat Panels Displays (FPD), one of the most growing waste sources. The project will be addressed not only to the recovery of these critical elements, but also the recycling process developed will result in the direct extraction of metallorganic precursors for direct reuse in the production of high added value nanoparticles that is ITO, Y2O3:Eu3+ and Nd-Fe-B. The project will develop an integral study of the recycling process, starting with logistic issues of the waste collection, optimising mechanical sorting technologies and developing innovative ones for the recovery and concentration of smaller fractions containing indium, yttrium and neodymium, developing simplified solvent extraction routes based on tailored chemical extraction agents able to extract a 95 % of the key metal in a metallorganic extracted solutions, and using these extracted solutions as precursors in the direct production of advanced nanoparticles. RECYVAL-NANO will validate the recycling process developed through the construction, optimisation and demonstration of full pilot lines for mechanical recycling of FPDs (500 kg/h) and hydrometallurgical metal recovery processes (500 g/h). Finally, the demonstration of the superior performance application of ITO, Y2O3:Eu3+ and Nd-Fe-B nanoparticles in electronic applications of transparent conductors, LEDs and permanent magnets respectively will complete the entire cycle of the project.

Water4Crops provides a combination of technical improvements in the field of bio-treatment and agricultural water use within a transdisciplinary identification of novel agri-business opportunities. Water4Crops aims at: a) developing innovative biotechnological wastewater treatments for improved water recycling, b) initiating the co-creation of alternative combinations of bio-treatment, recycling of high value elements, and combinations for bioproducts leading to a better commercialization of biotechnology and agricultural products in Europe and India, c)improving water use efficiency at field level through agronomics, plant breeding and locally adapted new irrigation technologies and accurate crop water requirement measurements techniques. Water4Crops will boost bio-based economy by applying a double track approach.

This project is aimed to the identification and development of nanostructured electrode and electrolyte materials to promote the practical implementation of the very high energy lithium-sulfur battery. In particular, the project will be directed to the definition and test of a new, lithium metal-free battery configuration based on the use of lithiated silicon as the anode and a nanostructured sulfur-carbon composite as the cathode. It is expected that this battery will offer an energy density at least three times higher than that available from the present lithium battery technology, a comparatively long cycle life, a much lower cost (replacement of cobalt-based with a sulfur-based cathode) and a high safety degree (no use of lithium metal). All the necessary steps for reaching this goal are considered, starting from material synthesis and characterization, exploiting nanotechnology for improving rate capability and fast charging, the fabrication and test of large scale prototypes and to the completion of the cycle by setting the conditions for the recycling process. A team of experts have been selected as partners of the project, including a number of academic laboratories, all with worldwide recognized experience in the lithium battery field, whose task will be that of defining the most appropriate electrode and electrolyte nanostructures. The project will benefit by the support of a laboratory expert in battery modeling to provide the theoretical guidelines for materials’ optimization. Large research laboratories, having advanced and modern battery producing machineries will be involved in the preparation and test of middle size battery prototypes. Finally, chemical and battery manufacturing industries will assure the necessary materials scaling-up and the fabrication and test of large batteries and particular attention will be devoted to the control of the safety and to definition and practical demonstration of its most appropriate recycling process.

The overall objectives are: strengthening the research potential of the applicant in order to formulate a solid and long term research strategy about nanotechnology applications; increase its visibility in the ERA; determining an impact on the local economy and society through technology innovation. The focus is on the application of nanotechnology to water treatment, aiming to boost the research potential in this emerging research domain.

The Institute of Solid State Physics, part of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences is the leading Bulgarian Research Institute in the field of solid matter research and its applications into multifunctional nanostructures.The INERA is an important mean for ISSP to rapidly increase its human and technological capacities, to reinforce its local networks and to deepen its partnerships on a European scale. It will mainly consist in an upgrade of equipment, scientific mobility trainings in leаding EU research centres, life-long trainings, partnership deepening and dissemination activities. INERA aims at preparing ISSP to become a national reference and reliable player on multifunctional planar nanostructures innovation niche employing available research capabilities and seeking EU soundness and visibility. The main expected project outcome for ISSP is to provide a new interdisciplinary view, to establish new links for common research and to encourage future synergies on national and international levels. The project will strengthen the capacity of business exploitation of research results and cooperation with industry and will build a long-term collaboration with research organizations and enterprises from EU. The project will have an important innovation impact as core research activities at ISSP are streamlined towards development of a Tunable Tool NanoMembrane: durable, high permeability, high thermal budget, tunable, scalable and Mass Production Capable Nanomembrane. This is expected to bring a new step in membrane technology development, triggering an avalanche of new products and processes in a wide range of applications including all known membrane industry aspects (separation by organic solvents, global water challenge like wastewater / desalination, fuel cells applications, and the life-health industries) with significant improvement of their energy effectiveness and environment ”shadow print”. INERA is supported by 8 leading EU research and 4 industry partners.

Soft nanotechnology is generally considered as a field that will have a major impact on technological developments in near future. However, the fundamental understanding of the wealth of new structures lacks far behind, despite supporting activity from material science. Such an understanding is indispensable for sustainable growth of this important research domain and its applications. A physics-oriented interdisciplinary education is urgently needed to guide young researchers to the point where they can tackle the relevant fundamental questions. SOMATAI is set up to provide just such training by combining two distinct scientific fields: Soft matter science is a well established interdisciplinary field for the bulk investigation of polymers, colloids, and liquid crystals with response amplitude and time to external stimuli as a function of soft matter structure being of special interest. The second highly relevant field is interface science, since nano-structured materials contain a huge area of internal interfaces which have an essential impact on material properties. The application of the soft matter approach to interfaces promises new and deeper understanding of interfacial phenomena. Interfaces of a water phase to a solid, liquid or gaseous second phase are of special interest and a focal point of SOMATAI. Such interfaces are highly relevant to products from European industry (food, cosmetics, paints) and processes (washing, coating, water purification). They have an outstanding importance from a scientific point of view due to specific interactions at such interfaces. This carefully planned teaching and research programme in a network of 10 leading academic partners, 1 large scale companies, 2 SMEs, and 4 top-level associated partners from Germany, Taiwan and the USA will ensure that young researchers are given an excellent training in a pioneering research domain of high scientific and technological relevance, where Europe can take a leading position.

The main objective of the 3 years research activity herein described is the design and development of protocols for the colloidal synthesis of a new generation of multi-component hybrid nanocrystals (HNCs) with precisely tunable properties and applicability in energy conversion, (photo)catalysis and environmental remediation. In this context, MINE aboard the most problematic points related to the growth of multi-component materials, in particular the conditions by which it is possible to tune both, the materials that compose the structure and the morphology of the final structure (core-shell or oligomer-like configurations), by integrating the synthesis, the structural characterization and the study of NC properties. Among all the systems we will focus on the design and development of synthetic strategies for the production of metal-semiconductor, metal-semiconductor oxide and metal-metal oxide. The research activity has been divided in four different parts: i) the development of synthetic strategies for the production of multicomponent hybrid NCs, ii) the characterization and study of their physico-chemical properties, reactivity and structure-activity relationships iii) the study of their applicability and iv) the determination of their long-term use in terms of safety, sustainability and feasibility, a necessary step before promoting the "real" applications of these novel exciting nanostructures.We expect that results arising from MINE, will allow not only preparing new and long sought materials, but also re-designing many of the existing materials and recipes, and therefore moving the state of the art to the next step, which can be seen as the fifth-generation of NCs by design

Understanding the mechanism of photo catalytic reactions is a key to systematically improve their efficiency and therewith enhance substantially the impact of green chemistry. Photo catalytic reactions are determined by the electronic level alignment between a catalyst and the reactant. This energy level alignment depends strongly on the local morphology of the catalyst and the absorption site of the reactant but is only poorly understood due to the difficulty to study photo catalytic reactions at the molecular length scale – the critical length scale for photo-catalytic processes.

The application of membrane technology in the treatment of drinking water has been rapidly increasing in recent years, and particularly the process of ultrafiltration (UF). While some expertise and research activities relating to UF technology currently exist within the European Union, the applicant, Dr Yu, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has unique knowledge and research experience of UF pre-treatment methods, which are essential to the optimal performance of the UF process. His proposed fellowship offers an important opportunity for collaboration between two internationally leading research institutions to advance the technology and facilitate the transfer of Dr Yu’s expertise to Imperial College London and the wider European research community. The proposed Marie Curie fellowship will concentrate on developing novel approaches to enhancing UF performance to achieve higher quality treated water cost-effectively and with greater operational efficiency (e.g. through reduced membrane fouling). The fundamental mechanisms involved in these processes will be investigated at nanometer-scale, which will expose the interactions between floc particles, activated carbon and membrane surfaces. In addition, the combination of coagulation-UF treatment with downstream processes, involving a second stage of UF preceded by ozone oxidation and organics adsorption via waste-derived activated carbon, to further enhance water quality, will also be evaluated in this project. In conclusion, the proposed project is expected to provide important and valuable results for the European research community and for water utilities using UF processes in water treatment plants currently, or planning new plants in the future.

The overall aim of this project is to establish the behaviour, fate and ecotoxicological effects of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in estuarine and coastal waters. Silver is a toxic element and increasingly used in NPs added to consumer products. This is resulting in AgNP release to marine waters. There is a lack of knowledge on AgNPs in marine systems, hampering development of legislation. The project has the following specific objectives: