The EU-27 chemical industry is the second largest in the world, generating sales for EUR 499 billion, which have increased by 38% since 2000. Most chemical industries rely on the use of catalysts (~90% of all chemical processes) and 60% of all industrial products are made using catalysis. Europe has a large share of the global catalyst manufacturing (~25%). Europe is also a significant user of catalysts (world's largest consumer of platinum group metals, PGMs). Many catalysts rely on critical metals, endangering the sovereignty and competitiveness of Europe. There is an urgent need to address strategic foreign dependencies, which include critical and particularly vulnerable metals like Mo and W. On top of this, the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine increased the high vulnerability of critical metals such as the PGMs and Ni. Metal recovery for catalyst recycling and the integrated green production of (electro)catalysts are essential for the cost-competitive and sustainable development of all electrifiable chemical value chains. The FIREFLY project sees the recycling of critical metals contained in spent, off specifications and waste catalysts, as an exceptional opportunity to address these issues.
The FIREFLY project aims to electrify a large part of the chemicals value chain in a sustainable way (environmental, economic, social): power-to-chemicals fostered via electrochemical catalyst recycling. The specific objectives (SO) to meet this aim are:
SO1. To research, develop, and optimize innovative and sustainable electrified/electrochemical technologies (TRL4) for recycling metal-based catalysts and the downstream (electro)chemical synthesis of strategic (electro)catalysts.
SO2. To research, develop, and optimize the powering of these electrified/electrochemical technologies by Renewable Energy Sources (RES) considering performance, environmental friendliness, and cost-efficiency in this electrification scenario.
SO3. To research, develop, and optimize a digital tool (based on machine learning and artificial intelligence) for prescriptive and predictive decision-making of the optimized metal recycling and catalyst synthesis processes.
SO4. To develop the modelling- and simulation-based engineering framework to support the understanding, innovation, and optimization of the design, operation, validation, and demonstration of the FIREFLY process.
SO5. To demonstrate (TRL6) the electrified FIREFLY process for the recycling of metal-based catalysts, simultaneous production of (electro)catalysts, and validation of the latter in selected (electro)chemical applications.
SO6. To assess the integrated sustainability of the FIREFLY concept and benchmark it versus the State of the Art (SoA) recycling and production of catalysts and selected chemical manufacturing applications.
The FIREFLY process will be the solution to overcome key challenges associated to the recycling of critical metals from spent, off specifications and waste catalysts and will positively influence a wide range of stakeholders in the catalyst value chain.
