Recycling – Politecnico di Milano

The YouRban project, funded by the European Union as part of Horizon Europe, coordinated by Professor Marcello Colledani of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano and also involving the Department of Design, has kicked off.

Europe is expected to generate almost 700,000 tonnes of reinforced polymer waste in 2025 and YouRban aims to address this challenge in an innovative and participatory manner. The project aims to create an active and aware urban community to find creative solutions for recycling and upcycling, in particular for reinforced polymers. By promoting the values of sustainability and inclusiveness and the knowledge of circular economy processes, the project will activate an urban ecosystem involving citizens, artists, designers, architects and small-scale producers (e.g., FabLabs and artisans’ workshops or Urban Factories).

YouRban is based on an innovative research strategy which draws on the European Union’s Green Deal and New European Bauhaus initiatives, promoting workshop and training activities for artists and designers.

The beating heart of the project is its truck, a mobile laboratory conceived as a true travelling workshop. This plant houses recycling and reprocessing technologies for end-of-life composite materials. The truck is not just a production tool, as it is also a powerful dissemination medium designed to promote the new values of the circular economy through exhibitions, artistic events and participatory activities related to the circular economy. Citizens, artists and FabLabs will be involved in co-creation activities and will also be able to explore demanufacturing and reprocessing technologies, gaining awareness of the economic, social and environmental benefits of the circular economy for their community.

The project is developed around two pillars: a pilot project in Milan and a pilot project in Barcelona. The approach of the pilot project in Milan is based on ‘problems in search of solutions’. Citizens point out concrete problems and artists design solutions through an innovative co-creation process. The involvement of YouRban’s technical experts ensures specialised expertise and training. The approach of the pilot project in Barcelona is reversed, as it adopts a ‘solutions in search of a problem’ perspective. Artists and creative networks design solutions for change, then look for stakeholders willing to adopt them to solve specific problems and meet community needs.

Finally, YouRban exploits the Open Call mechanism to involve micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, laboratories and associations interested in understanding material recycling technologies and opportunities, helping to raise awareness, train and create new jobs and business opportunities within the involved cities after the end of the project.

Manufacturing methanol from carbon dioxide and hydrogen contained in the residual gases of steel production. This is the aim of the FReSMe (From Residual Steel gases to Methanol) project, funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, concluded after four years of work.

The researchers estimate that with the FReSMe system, carbon dioxide emissions in Italian steel plants could be reduced by 61% compared to the current situation, which is much higher than with conventional CO2 capture technologies.

The process implemented by FReSMe is based on the SEWGS (Sorption Enhanced Water-Gas Shift) system which, starting from steel mill gases, produces two streams rich in carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The resulting hydrogen is partly used in the steelworks itself as a fuel, partly used to produce energy and partly transformed into methanol. The retained carbon dioxide is partially used for methanol production, while the excess is stored underground. Lastly, an electrolyser has been integrated into the system to increase methanol production.

The role of the Politecnico di Milano was to identify the ideal plant configuration, given the multiple possibilities of using hydrogen (use in steelworks, production of energy or methanol) through a detailed technical-economic analysis of the entire system. The aim of this analysis was to optimise the plant from an energy, environmental and economic point of view.

More specifically, various plant configurations were analysed, characterised by different volumes of methanol produced and different solutions for recovering the heat available in the process, as well as different quantities of hydrogen produced by the electrolyser. The results showed that the process can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions related to the steel production process.

During the project, we also carried out a technical-economic analysis aimed at optimising the FReSMe process in terms of methanol production volume and plant configuration, considering four methanol production capacities (300, 600, 900 and 1200 t/day)

says Professor Giampaolo Manzolini, the Politecnico di Milano’s contact person for the project.

The results showed that the optimal configuration with a carbon tax of less than €60/tonne and a methanol selling price in the range of €350-450/tonne, is characterised by a production of 600 tonnes/day: thus, using half of the steel mill gas to produce methanol and half to meet the needs of the steel mill itself. In general, the avoided CO2 cost is less than 20 €/tCO2, which is economically competitive, and the FReSMe system in this configuration allows a 61% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, which is much higher than what could be achieved with conventional CO2 capture technologies (e.g. with amines it is about 17%).

Tag: Recycling

YouRban: co-creating innovative solutions for recycling and reuse of composite materials

FReSMe