Due to its significant resource use, its waste and emissions, heavy industry has for many years been seen as an obstacle to sustainable development. But this is not the full story. The heavy industry sector is facing new challenges: the global fight against climate change, the environmental goals and their related constraints as well as the social reputation are the main drivers of their change towards sustainability.
The EU-funded BAMBOO project set itself to help four heavy industries in this shift. A paper industry in Germany, a mineral one in Greece, a steel company in Spain and a Turkish Oil&Gas industry are at the core of the project. BAMBOO partners will work together for more than three years to develop new technologies for energy and resource efficiency challenges in these four intensive industries.
BAMBOO technologies will focus on three main innovation pillars: waste heat recovery, electrical flexibility and waste streams valorisation. Furthermore, their application and impact will be supported flexible measures to be implemented in each demo case. Finally, technologies will be tested and validated under real production conditions to measure the plants’ improvements in terms of energy efficiency and raw materials consumption.
On 26th and 27th of March partners gathered in Zaragoza fur their first project meeting. The assembly, hosted by the BAMBOO coordinator Fundacion CIRCE, was crucial to set the basis of the project and plan the next year’s activities. Thanks to the high-level expertise of the organisations and the sound cooperation among partners, the meeting has been a great success and the project did an important step forward in the definition of the next steps and goals to be achieved within the next year.
Even though the project has just started, main challenges as well as cornerstone have been identified and partners are fine-tuning their strategies to improve their collaboration and get the most from their knowledges. On the other hand, the consortium is currently working on KPIs definition for technology solution evaluation and on exploitation activities and strategy by drafting a first market analysis and defining business models and business plans for the exploitable results.
Lastly, the consortium visited CIRCE facilities and laboratories and learn more about their studies on biomass combustion for energy efficiency.
Photos by Fundacion CIRCE
