Highly focused on strategic issues (Raw Materials, Sustainability, Design for Circularity, Traceability methodologies), MILLE Project will elaborate flexible lifelong learning modules, certified via the Micro-credentials approach, and made available to a wide audience of professionals and engineers. These modules will be tailored involving stakeholders representing hundreds of Companies & SMEs, and thus thousands of workers. Learning efficiency will be persecuted by high quality paths and tools.

NEW-RE will tackle the recycling challenge of Neodymium permanent magnets (PMs) and of spent lamps contained in electronic waste and e-mobility electric motors. The target is to recycle rare earth elements (REEs) by scaling up a hydrometallurgical process that will produce REEs oxides and iron pigment. Considering the time-consuming activities of dismantling the magnets, an innovative solution for the automatic dismantling of PMs will be developed and its sustainability assessed with LCA/LCC.

NRE ElectRA project will develop and commercialize innovative, remote-controlled, electric-powered equipment for mechanized production of strategic metals from Ultra-Low mining Profiles (0.9-1.7m). In 27 months, 3 narrow reef mining machines (NRE Fleet; Dozer-TRL7; Drill Rig-TRL7; Support Rig-TRL6) conducting drilling, excavating, and supporting will be brought to TRL 8. Results of continuous on-site testing will be used for development of components, risk assessment and customer support.

PARSIVAL aims to solve the issue of EoL photovoltaic (PV) panels in Apulia (IT) and in Extremadura (ES) regions by studying the use of PV refurbishment&recycling technologies in these areas, and to create a value chain for silicon from PV recycling by studying three applications for recovered PV cells that contain mainly Silicon but also aluminum paste and silicon nitride. PARSIVAL will create a long-lasting network and help training future professionals for the RIS countries development.

The main objective of the project “PhD BalticTeach” is to train future talents for industry via organizing three PhD schools by providing 6 ECTS credits per education event. The project will identify the doctoral students in the Baltic States and RIS regions of Italy, Slovenia, and Slovakia and help them with commercialization and upscaling aspects of PhD students research development into the business ideas in the field of sustainable materials.

PoSAddive aims to upscale the Additive Manufacturing (AM) process of metal materials using a novel powder application method for efficient, loss-less use of raw materials. In this new technology which has been filed for patent (PCT/EP2020/053507 and EP22158106) we are going to replace the disadvantages of the powder bed with the revolutionary idea of a powder sheet. The technology will be demonstrated at TRL7 using automotive and mobility-related demonstrator parts by CRF and Gemmate.

Europe needs experts to master the complex issues of a Social Licence to Operate (SLO), as currently many raw materials projects are severely delayed due to opposition from communities.

European engineering education pays little attention to SLO.

To bridge this gap, an alliance of SLO experts from research, universities and industry will design and deliver a tailored PhD school. It will be based around challenges provided by the industry, facilitated by innovative teaching/learning methods.