PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Providing over 32 Million jobs and a Gross Value Added of 19.7% of the total, industry is still the engine of the EU economy but its impact on climate change is undeniable; keeping up with the green revolution is essential to maintain its global position. In line with the EU Climate Law, the LIFE inFLUEnCER project aims to zeroing CO2 and GHGs production in hard-to-abate sectors. This will be achieved by installing a demonstrative and innovative CO2 Capture and Use (CCU) system at a ceramic group that enables for the first time to capture CO2 and atmospheric pollutants (SO2, SO3, NOX) from the flue gas to fix them into value added products to be used as secondary raw materials for different industrial applications, according to a circular economy approach: to validate their marketability, these secondary raw materials will be tested in ceramic, cosmetic and nutraceutical products. Results of the project will be relevant also for other hard-to-abate industries since the great versatility of the plant design makes it possible to adapt it to different types of flue gases from different industrial processes: to validate the replicability of the technology, small-scale tests will be carried out in the agro-livestock and metallurgical sectors. At the end of the project, we will avoid 7.395 tCO2e missions both captured at the plant and saved through the sustainable production of CaCO3 and 10t of other pollutants. The project will generate a positive gross margin of 9 M€ in the second year after the end of the project, rising to 24M€ within 5 years from the end of the project with 18 new job positions created directly. The technology and business model validation carried out during the project will demonstrate in a real-setting scenario the feasibility and economic viability of the investment. Positive results from the project will push forward the commercialization of the project exploitable results and stimulate market uptake and technology transfer to other sectors.