Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EECONE (European ECOsystem for greeN Electronics)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2023-07-01 do 2024-08-31
Many different environmental impacts arise from electronics, and the handling of electronic waste (e-waste) is rising quickly to the top of the agenda. E-waste is a significant issue for Europe: Improving its management is an explicit goal of the Green Deal objectives and the Circular Economy Action Plan (3.1. Electronics and ICT). However, due to the requirement to involve the whole value chain, from raw material suppliers to consumers, the complex material background and supply chain, as well as the multitude of competing interests, achieving circularity in the electronics industry is challenging. The main aim of the EECONE project is to reduce e-waste on a European scale. The entities that make up EECONE represent all parts of the value chain. EECONE’s approach is interdisciplinary, covering the social, economic, technological, and policy aspects.
EECONE’s vision is to develop and embed the constraints linked to managing the end-of-life of electronic products from the very beginning – in the development or process design. EECONE is paving the way as a first step toward a zero-waste electronic industry. The “6R concept will fully guide EECONE” (Reduce, Reliability, Repair, Reuse, Refurbish, Recycle).
To deploy its ambitious vision, the EECONE project defines four main objectives:
a) Define green. Create clear, simple, open tools to define and design ECS for circularity. Generate, for the first time, a clear framework aiding producers to evaluate their choices and pathways to ecodesign, to foster European leadership in the green transition.
b) Make green ECS (Electronic Components Systems): Provide innovative techniques for reducing, repairing, reusing, refurbishing, recycling to decrease e-waste and boost circularity in a new generation of electronics.
c) Showcase green solutions: Demonstrate innovation potential, usability, and versatility of the green solution along the value chain.
d) Building consciousness: Create an ecosystem empowering the 6R ECS generation
EECONE is a major opportunity to create a European ECOsystem for greeN Electronics and to position Europe as a role model for low environmental impact electronics. /
EECONE’s vision is to develop and embed the constraints linked to managing the end-of-life of electronic products from the very beginning – in the development or process design. EECONE is paving the way as a first step toward a zero-waste electronic industry. The “6R concept will fully guide EECONE” (Reduce, Reliability, Repair, Reuse, Refurbish, Recycle).
To deploy its ambitious vision, the EECONE project defines four main objectives:
a) Define green. Create clear, simple, open tools to define and design ECS for circularity. Generate, for the first time, a clear framework aiding producers to evaluate their choices and pathways to ecodesign, to foster European leadership in the green transition.
b) Make green ECS (Electronic Components Systems): Provide innovative techniques for reducing, repairing, reusing, refurbishing, recycling to decrease e-waste and boost circularity in a new generation of electronics.
c) Showcase green solutions: Demonstrate innovation potential, usability, and versatility of the green solution along the value chain.
d) Building consciousness: Create an ecosystem empowering the 6R ECS generation
EECONE is a major opportunity to create a European ECOsystem for greeN Electronics and to position Europe as a role model for low environmental impact electronics. /
EECONE consists of 5 work packages. Each work package tackles specific challenges to enable reduction of existing E-waste and minimise generation of E-waste in future by developing new promising technologies for easy recycling and repair of electronics. Specific tools and techniques will also be developed to provide a guideline to designers for decreasing E-waste generation and allow faster and easier recycling.
WP1 is devoted to project management activities, including administration and financial coordination, technical coordination, use case integration and monitoring, risk control and all other necessary actions to ensure the project is executed properly on day to day and global level. This WP will also manage interaction with Public Authorities and KDT-JU on project progress. Additionally, monitoring of environmental impact of project activities will also be carried out as WP-1 activity.
WP2 deals with management of existing E-waste by investigating the repairing possibilities and technologies that can make refurbishing of thrown away electronics easier. It will also look into recycling methods for existing and newly developed electronics, map and quantify critical raw material loops and define constraints during the recycling process to enable eco-design for better recycling rate.
WP3 aims at integrating the 6R in the eco-design of electronic systems by providing the adapted tools and techniques. Structured into three tasks designed to respond to a specific objective of the WP, the tasks focus on defining the infrastructure and data, metrics, tools and guidelines for the integration of the 6R in the eco-design of electronic systems.
WP4 will focus on development of new generations of electronics which will use sustainable raw materials, improved manufacturing technologies and designs to reduce the material usage, modular designs and novel techniques to increase the lifetime of electronics to reduce the environmental footprint of the future electronics. Battery recycling and development of new materials to replace the more hazardous materials used in traditional solutions will also form part of this WP.
Finally, WP5 will include exploitation, dissemination, standardisation activities and educating professionals about E-waste management. This WP will additionally involve periodical surveys to map available expertise and requests from partners to provide optimal support.
WP1 is devoted to project management activities, including administration and financial coordination, technical coordination, use case integration and monitoring, risk control and all other necessary actions to ensure the project is executed properly on day to day and global level. This WP will also manage interaction with Public Authorities and KDT-JU on project progress. Additionally, monitoring of environmental impact of project activities will also be carried out as WP-1 activity.
WP2 deals with management of existing E-waste by investigating the repairing possibilities and technologies that can make refurbishing of thrown away electronics easier. It will also look into recycling methods for existing and newly developed electronics, map and quantify critical raw material loops and define constraints during the recycling process to enable eco-design for better recycling rate.
WP3 aims at integrating the 6R in the eco-design of electronic systems by providing the adapted tools and techniques. Structured into three tasks designed to respond to a specific objective of the WP, the tasks focus on defining the infrastructure and data, metrics, tools and guidelines for the integration of the 6R in the eco-design of electronic systems.
WP4 will focus on development of new generations of electronics which will use sustainable raw materials, improved manufacturing technologies and designs to reduce the material usage, modular designs and novel techniques to increase the lifetime of electronics to reduce the environmental footprint of the future electronics. Battery recycling and development of new materials to replace the more hazardous materials used in traditional solutions will also form part of this WP.
Finally, WP5 will include exploitation, dissemination, standardisation activities and educating professionals about E-waste management. This WP will additionally involve periodical surveys to map available expertise and requests from partners to provide optimal support.
To realise its technical objectives, the EECONE project is organised along two main complementary axes:
1. The technology axis gathers specific tools and techniques whose development will have high impact on e-waste reduction. The EECONE consortium will advance twelve distinct technologies by innovating in the technical Work Packages WP2, WP3 and WP4.
2. The use case axis counts ten use cases (UCs) that will gather techniques developed across the work packages to provide tangible demonstration of the project results.
It is the ambition of EECONE to create a lasting impact on e-waste reduction and to establish the 6R concept throughout the European ECS industry, developing innovations beyond the state-of-the-art (BSOA) and using those in a wide-ranging field of applications in all key application areas of the ECS-SRIA (demonstrated in use cases). The anticipated progress in the state of the art for the technologies selected along EECONE’s Technology axis, in particular with regards to improving green credentials and e-waste reduction, is described.The application potential of these technologies will then be further demonstrated in EECONE’s 10 use cases (UC).
Demonstrators for 10 use cases:
- UC-01: Electrical Control Units for Automotive Industry
- UC-02: Power Electronic Inverter On Board Charger and DCDC converter
- UC-03: Membrane switches improved via the 6R strategy
- UC-04: Eco-designed remote-control unit (RCU)
- UC-05: Creation of Critical Raw Material Value Chain in Appliances, Creation of Traceability Systems, and Recycling Strategies
- UC-06: Health monitoring devices employing point-of-care sensors
- UC-07: Reducing data centre e-waste via technical LCA-driven refresh and reuse
- UC-08: Service life extension of ICT user equipment toward Internet access within planetary boundaries
- UC-09: Sensing electronics for health management system in an aeronautical structural component
- UC-10: Green Soil Probe – Technologies for green IoT devices for agriculture
1. The technology axis gathers specific tools and techniques whose development will have high impact on e-waste reduction. The EECONE consortium will advance twelve distinct technologies by innovating in the technical Work Packages WP2, WP3 and WP4.
2. The use case axis counts ten use cases (UCs) that will gather techniques developed across the work packages to provide tangible demonstration of the project results.
It is the ambition of EECONE to create a lasting impact on e-waste reduction and to establish the 6R concept throughout the European ECS industry, developing innovations beyond the state-of-the-art (BSOA) and using those in a wide-ranging field of applications in all key application areas of the ECS-SRIA (demonstrated in use cases). The anticipated progress in the state of the art for the technologies selected along EECONE’s Technology axis, in particular with regards to improving green credentials and e-waste reduction, is described.The application potential of these technologies will then be further demonstrated in EECONE’s 10 use cases (UC).
Demonstrators for 10 use cases:
- UC-01: Electrical Control Units for Automotive Industry
- UC-02: Power Electronic Inverter On Board Charger and DCDC converter
- UC-03: Membrane switches improved via the 6R strategy
- UC-04: Eco-designed remote-control unit (RCU)
- UC-05: Creation of Critical Raw Material Value Chain in Appliances, Creation of Traceability Systems, and Recycling Strategies
- UC-06: Health monitoring devices employing point-of-care sensors
- UC-07: Reducing data centre e-waste via technical LCA-driven refresh and reuse
- UC-08: Service life extension of ICT user equipment toward Internet access within planetary boundaries
- UC-09: Sensing electronics for health management system in an aeronautical structural component
- UC-10: Green Soil Probe – Technologies for green IoT devices for agriculture