HERCCULES has started, an international research project stemmed from an ambitious idea by researchers at LEAP (Piacenza Energy and Environment Laboratory) and Politecnico di Milano, specifically Profs. Stefano Consonni, Manuele Gatti, Matteo Romano and Federico Viganò of the Department of Energy together with Profs. Marco Derudi, Renato Rota and Giuseppe Storti of the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta”. The consortium made up of 23 partners will work for 5 years with the aim of demonstrating the feasibility of the entire CO2 Capture, Utilisation and Storage chain (CCUS) in the regions of southern Europe with a high industrial density, in this case in the Po Valley and Greece. The primary focus is the decarbonisation of cement production and waste-to-energy, two strategic sectors for the circular economy.

The project intends to trigger concrete actions to contain CO2 emissions. It will aim to accelerate the application of the CCUS in Mediterranean Europe, leveraging on the transport and storage initiatives already under construction in Italy and Greece and developing innovative capture technologies that are not only efficient, but also particularly flexible and replicable, in order to be adaptable to the technological evolutions of the reference industrial sectors.

The technological, infrastructural, safety, regulatory and financial aspects will be addressed with a multidisciplinary approach, which will allow the creation of industrial communities capable of exploiting the synergy between the processes of the CCUS supply chain. Universities, research centers and consulting companies will develop business models of HERCCULES technologies sized for future full-scale applications.

Finally, one of the objectives of HERCCULES will be to improve information on the CCUS theme: communication experts will organize educational and training events to communicate methodologies and technological solutions with schools, stakeholders and policy makers, with the aim of accompanying the transition of our industrial sectors towards a sustainable future for the European environment and economy.

The researchers of the Department of Energy, in particular, will follow all the research activities related to the design of the pilot plants of capture in the cement and in the waste-to-energy plants and the subsequent experimental campaigns, the activities and the studies required to transfer the technologies on a full scale as well as some communication activities in schools and towards the media.

HERCCULES was funded by the program Horizon Europe and has the support of numerous industrial partners. The application of CO2 capture technologies is an essential element for the achievement of carbon neutrality by 2050 based on the scenarios outlined by the European directives and the recommendations of the Commission itself.

CONSORTIUM PARTNERS

LEAP (coordinator), EU CORE Consulting (Italy), Energan Oil&Gas (Greece), Buzzi Unicem (Italy), Titan cement (Greece), Sumitomo SHI FW (Finland), Air Liquide (Italy), Fraunhofer ISI (Germany), Politecnico di Milano (Italy), BCG (Italy), CSIC (Spain), Celitement (Germany), Università di Utrecht (Netherlands), Wietersdorfer Alpacem (Austria), Artidek (Ukraine), Shogenergy (Estonia), Università di LUT (Finland), TPI (Italy), ClustER Greentech (Italy), CRES (Greece), A2A Ambiente e A2A Spa (Italy), ENI (Italy).