This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
EconoMISER Project
Economic Material Innovation for Sustainable and Efficient use of Resources
Overview
Royce is a member of the Foundation Industries Sustainability Consortium (FISC) which has been awarded £19.5 million from UKRI to run the Economic Material Innovation for Sustainable and Efficient use of Resources (EconoMISER) programme. The funding will provide the UK’s Foundation Industries with the essential tools needed to decarbonise.
This important programme is aimed at the scaling-up of the sustainable technologies urgently required by the strategically important Foundation Industries. Situated in our industrial heartlands, these sectors include metals, ceramics, glass, chemicals, paper and cement, producing 28m tonnes of material per year, and worth £50bn annually to the UK economy.
About EconoMISER
EconoMISER is developing a network of scale-up centres across the FISC partnership to accelerate innovation in low carbon, resource efficient and sustainable solutions for the foundation industries.
The programme provides dedicated support for the UK’s foundation industries through experienced teams of industry fellows and application scientists who are now initiating projects across the FI innovation network. FISC partners are collaborating on several cross-sector research themes, providing solutions to the national challenges faced by companies working across the foundation industries.
By leveraging the combined capabilities and expertise of FISC, EconoMISER is accelerating the translation of research through its scale-up centres and into manufacturing plants and supply chains.
The Targets
Foundation industries produce 75% of all the material on the planet! But in doing so are by far the UK’s biggest industrial polluters: around 50 million tonnes of CO2 per year, or 10% of the total CO2 emitted by UK homes and businesses.
EconoMISER projects are centred around six research themes. Each research theme is led by a FISC partner who coordinates cross-centre collaboration with other members of the consortium:
Project Lifecycle
Connect
TFI Fellows are engaging with companies and RTOs to landscape the national research and innovation challenges faced by the foundation industries and to identify project partnerships for EconoMISER.
This connection is establishing cross sector links throughout technology and manufacturing readiness levels to initiate projects that will extend beyond the lifecycle of EconoMISER.
Innovate
The EconoMISER team and project partners will develop identified solutions through the network of scale-up centres established by FISC and roll out technology and manufacturing solutions into the Foundation Industries.
EconoMISER is organised around five research themes and will use FISC facilities to scale-up research through technology and manufacturing readiness levels.
Collaborate
EconoMISER Application Scientists are working alongside two or more members of FISC and external project partners to deliver R&D solutions for the Foundation Industries.
FISC is comprised of five research facilities who offer a wide range test capability and expertise to help identify solutions to research and innovation challenges faced by the foundation industries.
Impact
EconoMISER projects are supporting the decarbonisation and sustainability needs of the Foundation Industries through improved resource efficiency, sustainable products and Industry 4.0 solutions.
Outcomes will add security to raw materials supply chains, improve cost competitiveness, accelerate digitisation, and advance skills and diversity within the workforce.
FISC Partners
Case Studies
Pulpex
Pulpex collaborated with the EconoMISER team at the Henry Royce Institute on a sprint project to develop proof-of-concept samples, delivering the expertise and equipment needed to deliver a minimum viable demonstrator of the product at scale.
This agile research and development project enabled through the EconoMISER programme has successfully delivered product samples and data which has informed Pulpex’s scale up process – with the potential to significantly reduce the reliance on plastics for packaging solutions.
Through projects such as this collaboration with Pulpex, EconoMISER has demonstrated how Application Scientists based in the Henry Royce Institute can support businesses of any size including those in the transnational scale up space. These projects have successfully addressed de-risking challenges associated with new product development in the Foundation Industries, improving the sector landscape around EconoMISER research themes including process optimisation, circular economy and sustainable materials.
DSF
Through the EconoMISER project, DSF partnered with Royce who provided extensive support in conducting Thermodynamic modelling for the use of Hydrogen as fuel in glass melting furnaces.
Thermodynamic modelling provides a tool to study the chemical interactions involved, including the evaporation of volatile components from the glass melt and the vapour phase corrosion of refractory materials. As we navigate towards net-zero, carbon emissions and the technological demands to meet such targets, The ability to create a digital twin of a manufacturing process has never been more important.
Results from this project have helped inform how different refractory materials will behave under hydrogen fuel conditions before any expensive physical trials are performed.
ACCROL
Accrol worked with EconoMISER via the Henry Royce Institute to conduct a detailed literature review into sustainability data within the bathroom tissue and forest products markets.
Environmental sustainability is increasingly used as a focal point in marketing products in the paper industry, especially for bathroom tissue products.
The report helped Accrol navigate sustainability claims made by competitors about sources of fibres for paper making. They can now make more informed decisions about the use of future feedstocks for their products from a sustainability perspective.
Collaborate
EconoMISER is investing in scale up centres for the foundation industries, conducting sprint; single & multi-partner projects with businesses operating in the foundation industries and networking within the sectors to identify and set up large multi- partner projects.
To collaborate please contact:
Cathryn.bell@manchester.ac.uk or visit ukfisc.org