By-products for sustainable concrete in the urban environment. URBCON reduces the use of raw materials and the CO2 emissions from construction and maintenance of buildings and infrastructure in cities.The URBCON project targets the use of concrete as a building material. With the focus on the metropolitan areas of Ghent, Rotterdam and Northern France, by-products such as metallic slags and incineration ashes are used as alternative raw materials for the production of concrete. Replacing primary raw materials with by-products could save an estimated 84 million tonnes of mineral building materials per year.

Near-zero-waste recycling of low-grade sulphidic mining waste for critical-metal, mineral and construction raw-material production in a circular economy. The success of the NEMO project will lead to the unrestricted supply of critical raw materials CRMs (Co, rare earths and Mg), valuable metals (Cu, Ni, Zn, and Sc), industrial minerals (Na2SO4, K2SO4 and MgSO4) and construction raw materials for cement and concrete production, originating from domestically available, but currently unexploited, sulphidic mining waste, and in this way substantially reduce Europe’s dependence on the imports of these vital raw materials.

Removing the waste streams from the primary Aluminum production in Europe. he RemovAL project will combine, optimize and scale-up developed processing technologies for extracting base and critical metals from such industrial residues and valorising the remaining processing residues in the construction sector. The ambition of RemovAL is straightforward: to overcome environmental issues and technological barriers related to aluminium industry, by combining and advancing existing technologies for the sustainable processing of BR, SPL and other by-products, generating revenue.

Waterless Iron Silicate Production with Energy Recovery. The aim of WhISPER (Waterless Iron Silicate Production with Energy Recovery) is to develop a new iron silicate produced with the atomisation technology while evaluating and demonstrating the new properties of the material for improved commercial applications. The project led by Atlantic Copper, will enable an optimal use of raw materials within Europe and will contribute to European Commission’s current strategy on Circular Economy.

Innovation in Motion: Red mud and Copper slag Valorisation in Engineered Products. The general objective of this Upscaling project is to produce full-scale final inorganic polymer products, from Metallo copper slag and Aughinish red mud, at the respective companies’ sites, using a modular and mobile upscaling unit. The generated products need to deliver properties similar to or better than traditional market substitutes and will be evaluated in terms of properties (i.e. leaching, durability, fire resistance, …), to allow for their market uptake within 3 years after the project. Next to realizing the target of TRL 7 by the completion of the project, the on-site production of final products at Metallo and Aughinish plants and the related matchmaking events will contribute to the level of customer readiness by demonstrating its feasibility to local construction companies and policymakers, thereby providing a nucleus for industrial symbiosis.