The necessary technologies and methodical approaches developed by Digi4Circular’s partners include the following technological aspects:
• An Information Space:
o Development of an architecture for a single source of truth in regard of all relevant information (finished: EDAG, DataCL, SusDat)
o Locally running MVP of the information space for proof of concept (finished: EDAG, DataCL, SusDat)
o Automatic transfer of all data to the information space, using intelligent decision tools and data aggregation to avoid data waste (under development: SusDat, DataCL)
o Connection of a digital product passport architecture to gather information from a single source (under development: DataCL, EDAG, UNIFI)
• Innovative Aluminum alloy:
o Realisation of requirement-based material development and property definition (finished: EDAG, UPB, LKR)
o Computational material design for identifying impurity tolerant alloy concepts with defined properties by minimising detrimental phases such as β-AlFeSi and Al2Cu and maximising the Q-Phase and α-AlFeMnSi Phase (finished: UPB, LKR)
o Specimen casting and mechanical investigation of the designed alloy “LWK1” compared to Tesla 3C10 HPDC commercial alloy (under development: LKR, UPB)
o Additional corrosion testing of the developed alloy and development of accelerated testing methods (not started: FhG, LKR, UPB)
• Rapid LCA Tool:
o Development of a dataset of process archetypes together with the analysis of the commercial impact database, establishing a methodological foundation for the rapid LCA tool and defining a literature-derived base process archetype (finished: UNIFI, CELSA, FERI)
o Establishment of Digi4Circular specific EoL strategies and business model development (finished: CELSA, FERI, UNIFI)
o A validated excel based RapidLCA mock-up was developed and first steps toward the implementation in the Synera platform of an automated methodology for production process reconstruction and subsequent LCA estimation (under development: UNIFI, UPB)
• Knowledge extraction technologies:
o Definition of technical differentiation criteria for Large Language Models (LLMs) and technical comparison using selected models, including Llama, ChatGPT5 Turbo, and Gemini (finished: UPB)
o Interoperability investigations of data and formats within the information space, using the ReqIF data type as the solution artifact (finished: UPB, EDAG). (finished: UPB, EDAG)
o Content identification for ontology mapping across all work packages and domains (under development: UPB, EDAG)
• Orchestration as a key feature for circular development:
o Setting up design rule catalogue for circular design (finished: UPB, UNIFI, CELSA, FERI)
o Translation and semantic connections for design rules and preparation of a rule-based system approach for automatic design changes (under development: UPB, EDAG, UNIFI)
o Development of an overall process diagram for orchestration implementation (finished: UPB, EDAG)
o Technical specifications and interconnection of methodologies for Synera integration (under development: EDAG, all)
o First integration attempts like Rapid-LCA-LCC tool and ICMD integration for material design (under development: EDAG, UPB, UNIFI)
The Digi4Circular methodologies are progressing well, and the infrastructure is mostly defined. Initial implementation attempts on the Synera platform have shown first successes, as well as the need for some adaptations to the methodologies in order to fully enable the connection of all subtasks within the project.
