Sustanaibility Area
Waste, Energy and Environmental Impact
R&D and technology validation operations to enhance the competitiveness and sustainability of businesses
Eurecat’s Waste, Energy and Environmental Impact Unit provides expertise and experience in developing and improving processes for managing, reusing and minimising waste, assessing and choosing more efficient electrical and thermal systems and designing and validating cells and batteries for electric vehicles.
We deliver characterisation, simulation and modelling services in waste, energy and batteries for assessment and optimisation.We conduct studies for experimental validation and scaling-up of chemical, physical and biological processes, testing equipment and technologies and assessing the environmental and socioeconomic impact of processes and products.
We deploy circular economy models at the core of all our services. These capabilities enable us to deliver solutions to businesses in the product design, construction, automotive and other industries that are looking to enhance the energy performance of their products and processes and lessen their environmental impact.
Research lines
Waste and the circular economy
- Process optimisation for minimising waste generation.
- Optimising resource use efficiency in industrial processes.
- Developing and implementing multi-R solutions to optimise the value of waste management.
- Recovering value-added products (metals, slag, scraps, biorefinery).
- Implementing energy recovery of complex and hazardous waste under a zero waste standpoint using pyrolysis or gasification.
- Developing accelerated carbonation processes for industry decarbonisation.
- Identifying and implementing new industrial symbiosis strategies.
Electrical and thermal energy
- Designing and developing energy technology hybridisation systems.
- Solutions for predicting energy generation in renewable facilities.
- Supervision and predictive maintenance of electrical equipment and systems.
- Assessing industry decarbonisation.
- Developing solutions for heat and energy recovery (Waste-to-Energy).
- Developing drying systems using advanced solar evaporation (ASE).
- Developing control and maintenance strategies for energy equipment and processes.
- Integrating the energy vector for sustainable building: passive (envelope) and infrastructure solutions for increasing energy efficiency.
Electrical mobility and energy storage systems
- Preliminary assessment for comparing and selecting chemicals, cells and energy storage system configuration proposals.
- Modelling and simulation of batteries to identify parameters and algorithms for State of Charge (SOC) and State of Health (SOH).
- Developing and validating cells and batteries including short-circuit, safety, capacity, power, thermal and charge/discharge testing.
- Assembling battery prototypes.
- End-of-life development and optimisation: characterisation and classification for second life, recovery, dismantling and recycling.
Sustainable impact
- Assessing and projecting the environmental, economic and social gain of products, processes and companies.
- Implementing circular economy models for energy and resource management (raw materials, by-products and waste).
- Supporting Eco-design and Circular Design (DfC).
- Developing indicators and tools for quantifying and reporting environmental impact.
- Supporting decarbonisation policies and corporate social responsibility (CSR).
- Developing and implementing methodologies for determining sustainability impact: life cycle analysis (LCA), social life cycle analysis (-LCA), cost cycle analysis (CCA), biodiversity impact, water footprint (WF) and carbon footprint (CF).
- Developing and implementing socioeconomic impact methodologies: Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) and Hybrid Fulfilment-Impact
- Matrix (HFIM).
Services
Technological characterisation and analysis
- Physicochemical characterisation of process flows and waste.
- Characterising electrical and thermal energy sources.
- Thermal characterisation of building components.
- Analysing and selecting technologies and solutions in waste, energy and batteries.
Process simulation and optimisation
- Chemical modelling and speciation of waste flows.
- Energy simulations of energy facilities and technologies, both electrical and thermal, using PVGIS, TRNSYS and Matlab.
- Support for the energy refurbishment of buildings and characterisation of insulation.
- Modelling the performance and state of batteries and energy storage systems.
Experimental validation and scaling-up
- Physical, chemical and biological processes for waste separation and recovery.
- Chemical and thermal recycling of waste flows.
- Experimental testing of energy equipment and technologies: Photovoltaic panels, inverters, batteries, electric loads.
- Emulating and validating heat sources and heat recovery strategies.
- Technical and financial and environmental studies.
- Process socioeconomic impact studies.
Representative sectors
OCA-WAS, the Eurecat control body accredited according to the UNE-EN ISO/IEC 17020 standard in the field of major accidents
Eurecat offers companies the OCA-WAS control body with the aim of supporting the professional activity of companies through the evaluation of safety reports (SI) and Quantitative Risk Analysis reports (QRA).
We have the necessary technical means to prevent accidents involving hazardous substances, thus limiting their consequences on human health and the environment.
Contact
Frederic Clarens Blanco
Director of Waste, Energy and Environmental Impact Unit at Eurecat
Doctor of Science from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and degree in Chemistry from the University of Barcelona (UB). He has worked on projects implementing circular economy practices and sustainability impact analysis in the chemical, mining, agri-food, automotive, metal and polymer material and other industries and also in technologies and processes for water treatment, waste recovery and industry decarbonisation.
- Tel. +34 618 53 85 96
- frederic.clarens@eurecat.org
Outstanding projects
Technological solutions to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, primary energy usage and Europe’s dependence on energy imports from abroad.
Development of new techniques for reusing and recycling lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles.
New multi-mineral modular brine mining process (MMBMP) for the recovery of valuable metals and minerals.
Multimedia
News
Generative AI, breakthroughs in sensor technology and the potential of photovoltaic energy among the industry trends which will shape 2024
The introduction of generative artificial intelligence in virtually every link of the supply chains of many industrial sectors, the [...]
Eurecat investigates manufacturing advanced materials with graphene for the automotive, aerospace, hydrogen energy and water treatment industries
The Eurecat technology centre is coordinating the European GIANCE project which is to develop and test grapheme-based innovative and recyclable [...]
Santos Jorge and Eurecat create new product with waste glass for golf bunkers
Santos Jorge, a business engaged in managing and treating recycled glass, and the Eurecat technology centre have teamed up to [...]
Eurecat fast-tracks scaling new, more sustainable chemical processes to expedite industrial decarbonisation
Starting today at Expoquimia, the Eurecat technology centre is showcasing new solutions in industrial scaling to meet society’s challenges [...]
New predictive maintenance system to enable smart street lighting management
A new smart predictive maintenance system for street lighting systems will enable integration of multiple data sources and their [...]
Green hydrogen, the use of biogas, gas capture, batteries, new materials and digitalisation, among the new technological advances that drive decarbonisation
The technologies that facilitate decarbonisation ‘are varied and it’s very important to reduce their costs and increase their robustness’, [...]
