In a few weeks, the iBot4CRMs consortium will meet in Athens, Greece, to review project progress and decide the next steps in the development of smart robotic systems for critical raw materials recycling and recovery from urban waste.
The consortium meeting will be hosted from December 10th to 11th by project partner E.K.AN. at their Corinth facility, near the Greek Capital. The Hellenic Recycling Center is one of the four iBot4CRMs’ pilot sites, currently exploring robotic solutions to dismantle flat panel displays and desktops for Copper, Gold, Silver, and Neodymium magnets, and to identify and recover Copper and Aluminium from crashed Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment.
The facility visit is an opportunity for the consortium to explore E.K.AN.’s contribution to the project and to align the work towards achieving shared goals. This is the third consortium meeting this year for the Horizon Europe project. The last plenary meeting took place in Lisbon, Portugal, at Valorsul, where partners agreed to gradually release new project outputs, including the defined scenarios for each pilot site at the beginning of next year. In Athens, project partners are expected to make decisions on a cohesive timeline between pilot owners and technology providers.
For reference, the innovation project will develop scalable technologies and test them across seven real world scenarios, focusing on end-of-life e-vehicles, electronic and electrical waste, metal scraps, incineration slag, and other urban waste streams. At the four project’s pilot sites, the following scenarios will be tested:
Volt Motor, Izmir, Turkey, Scenario 1
The Turkish electric motor producer is leveraging robotics to extract Neodymium magnets from dismantled electric motors from End-of-life Vehicles (ELV). Visit their website.
E.K.AN., Corinth, Greece, Scenario 2, 3, and 4
The Greek recycling center is exploring robotic solutions to dismantle flat panel displays for Copper, Gold, and Silver, desktops for Neodymium magnets, and to identify and recover Copper and Aluminium from crashed Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). Visit their website.
Take a look at this map for an overview of our consortium partners.
Europe currently recycles less than 1% of its rare earth elements, despite these critical materials being essential to produce a wide array of electronic and automotive products, as well as for the advancement of sustainable technologies (Rare Earth Magnets and Motors: A European Call for Action). The low recycling rate was a concern that highlighted at the 7th EIT Raw Materials Summit in Brussels earlier this year. iBot4CRMs consortium partner INESC TEC represented the project at the event to give momentum to conversations around increasing recycled content, improving traceability, and designing for disassembly to effectively close material loops.
Recovering and recycling Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) is a strategic imperative for the European Union to reduce the dependence on imports from other countries, strengthen the supply chains of those raw materials within the bloc and reduce the negative consequences on the climate linked with extraction of primary raw materials. The big picture is this: CRMs are expected to facilitate green and digital transition, enhance long-term competitiveness, and maintain open strategic autonomy in the context of changing geo-political climate.
To implement this big picture, the EU wants to enhance its recycling capacity to “produce at least 25% of the Union’s annual consumption of strategic raw materials by 2030 and the Union should be able to recycle significantly increasing amounts of each strategic raw materials from waste”, as per the European Critical Raw Materials Act.
The ambitions set out by the CRMA are achievable and iBot4CRMs, a Horizon Europe Research and Innovation project, is a crucial cog in the wheel that is developing technologies to recover and recycle CRMs such as neodymium (for manets), copper, gold, and silver to secure these materials to be self-reliant, competitive and resilient.
Keep an eye out for the post-consortium meeting blogpost with key messages and next steps for iBot4CRMs!