EXPECTED IMPACT
The novel approaches implemented in CORALIS have been designed with the objective of achieving an important impact in terms of resource and energy consumption, thus improving the overall economic and environmental feasibility of the involved processes in CORALIS
CORALIS will demonstrate how symbiotic value chains in process industry can optimise resources utilisation by closing circular loops of a wide variety of resources, including water (Escombreras), CO2 (Escombreras, Höganäs), energy (Höganäs, Brescia, Basauri), different types of commodities, particularly chemicals (Escombreras, Izmit) and metals (Brescia) and other materials such as slags (Höganäs, Brescia).
Consequently, CORALIS approaches will significantly contribute to the adoption and transition of the processes industries towards a circular economy.
Energy efficiency will be improved by means of the adaption of current processes by more innovative and efficient ones that enable the symbiosis case (Escombreras, Linz) and the recovery and exchange of waste heat among processes (Höganäs, Basauri).
Thus, CORALIS is expected to improve the energy efficiency of the targeted processes in the Lighthouse demonstrators between 11% and 20%. In addition, waste heat recovery approaches can be easily replicated among demonstrators, thus potentially contributing to improve the rest of demonstrators beyond the project activities.
The demonstration of symbiotic relations will contribute to lower the required energy intensity for the processes involved in the symbiosis, as the reuse of waste energy and the utilisation of materials from geographically close sources will reduce not only the direct energy inputs (e.g. natural gas or electricity), but also indirect energy consumption associated to the extraction, treatment and transport of the raw materials.
Overall, the approaches deployed in CORALIS are expected to achieve up to 30% reduction of energy intensity in Escombreras.
CO2 emissions reduction will be achieved through CO2 exchange among processes (Escombreras, Höganäs), replacement of mineral and fossil feedstock (Escombreras, Brescia, Linz) and reducing fossil fuel consumption by waste heat recovery (Höganäs, Brescia, Basauri) and RES integration (Escombreras, Brescia, Linz). Overall, the contribution to CO2 emission savings in the Lighthouses due to CORALIS is estimated to range between 25% and 50%.
The solutions and processes developed in the project will enable waste and by-products recycling and exchange between processes, e.g. recovery of CaCl2 and CO2 for replacing mineral-based CaCO3 in Escombreras, and treatment of metal powder and oxides for replacing virgin pig iron in Brescia, thus reducing the raw materials import and intensity in the project demonstrators.
Along the different Lighthouse demonstrators, the average reduction in raw material intensity has been calculated to be higher than 40%.
In line with the former point, waste generation will be handled through the demonstration of solutions for their treatment and reintroduction in the value chain, thus not only reducing the environmental and economic impact of waste generation but also reducing the amount of virgin raw materials needs in the process industry.
As a result of CORALIS activities, it is expected to achieve up to 100% reduction of the generation of the targeted wastes in Escombreras (CaCl2) and in Brescia (metal powders and oxides).
CORALIS will carry out the profiling of existing symbiotic relationships of the 3 Lighthouse industrial areas and will guide the technoeconomic assessment of the 3 Followers areas, this assessing the conditioning factors to IS in 6 regions from 5 different countries and contributing to improve the knowledge basis and understanding of the most critical barriers affecting IS.
CORALIS aims not only to better understand these barriers but to provide support to overcome them by compiling in a set of guidelin es and recommendations in CORALIS Handbook.
CORALIS will put in place a specific training plan aiming at providing the knowledge generated through the project to a wide audience, from undergraduate students to technical experts at the industries, placing special emphasis on the plant managers of the industries involved as demo-sites in the project.
For this purpose, training material will be developed, and courses will be provided by training experts from the RTD partners involved in CORALIS, thus becoming a crucial activity for the project dissemination and exploitation.
Besides the environmental gains related to the reduced extraction of mineral materials (Escombreras) and to the reduced generation of industrial waste landfilling (Brescia), CORALIS project will reduce a total of about 1,000 ktons of CO2 per year. According to Eurostat, GHG from industrial processes and product use in the EU account for about 350,000 ktons of CO2 per year, so CORALIS would achieve a 0,25% reduction in emissions in the whole EU industry.
Nevertheless, this represents an important step in the development of zero direct emissions industrial areas.
IS has a huge potential both in economic (savings of 1.4 billion/year EUR) and employment creation terms (1.2 to 3 million jobs by 2030). In this sense, by the end of the project it is expected that CORALIS will be able already to cover about 1% of this potential (annual benefits of the 3 Lighthouses estimated at 15 M€).
The later replication through the followers and other stakeholders could multiply by 10 this impact in the next 5 years.
