How does SATURN help to reach EU objectives and targets?

EU policy objectives relevant to the SATURN project

Environmental sustainability, and ecological footprint

Sustainable Management of Resources: This project falls under "heading of strengthened innovation, research and education"[1], where it is "emphasized that environmental technologies and eco-innovation contribute to achieving the aims of the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs, including combating climate change". In addition, this project will ensure energy saving by the recycling of valuable resources and by reducing transportation costs to world markets for hand sorting. It also falls into the "Ecological Industrial Policy" (launched by the German Presidency) aiming at making Europe the energy efficient and environmental engineer of the world. A proven process coming from collaboration in research - developed and demonstrated with measurable success rate through this demonstration project - would encourage investments and new business growth areas in the environmental business.

Implementation of sustainable development measures: It was very clearly stated in the report from ETAP[2], that "given the increasing world-wide demand for and pressure on natural resources, existing technologies are not, in the longer term, adequate to safeguard sustainable development." Non ferrous metals play a significant role in a wide range of key industries and the constant loss of these high value metals from the material chain in Europe, due to the lack of an appropriate sorting technology, is of serious concern.

Energy saving by improved recycling rates: Energy saving will also be achieved by dramatically raising recycling and recovery rates of high value NF metals. The creation of secondary raw materials via the recycling route also expends far less energy than production based on primary raw materials.

Protection of the Environment: One of the key concepts behind this project is the protection of the environment by providing the mechanism and means to reach a rate of more than 98%[3] recycling of NF metals at end of life.[4] In spite of the landfill directives and agreements on recycling targets, many EU countries are unable to reach the targets set using current practices and technologies at present with the result that there is a poor recycling rate resulting in a product that is useless to EU markets.

The first step must be an implementation and demonstration of an effective automatic NF sorting technology in the treatment processes for MSW and industrial waste; otherwise the NF metals are lost in the landfill flow stream or to incineration.

One of the main NF metals found in waste streams is aluminum. In terms of materials savings in recycling Aluminum, for each 1 kg of recycled aluminum, 6kg of Bauxite, 4 kg of chemical products and 14 kWh of electricity is saved. Recycling of aluminum saves 95% energy and the equivalent amount of CO2.

ERA: It is mainly through collaborative projects such as the one proposed here between research institutes and industry that existing knowledge can be extended through capacity building of the workforce.

Economic sustainability

Re-use of NF metals in Europe is a rapidly growing market sector with daily changes in spot prices and demands, and the rising trend of NF metals, results in a positive cost-benefit analysis It is also clear that there is an enormous positive impact in the environment (with automated sensor sorting of waste) in the prevention of shipment of this material out of Europe for further (usually non-environmentally friendly means) treatment. At present, the residues are then burnt or land filled in these countries with a continuous and large negative impact on the environment together with the accumulative loss of vital resources from Europe.

[1] Work Programme, FP7: Environment: Sustainable Management of resources (main activities of the Environment Theme in the Cooperation Specific Programme)

[2] Increase and focus Research Demonstration

[3] Current assessment studies and pre-research carried out by RWTH-Aachen indicate that a rate of 95% can be realistically achieved through the new process with sensor sorting and advanced classifier software.

[4] The overall performance targets of EuMaT and materials and technologies for 2030 are to protect the environment by containing processes (eg by recycling 95% of metallic and 70% on average of other advanced engineering materials at the end of their useful life. Also to help to reduce the life cycle costs of process equipment and infrastructure by 30% and energy consumption by 50%) May 2007 EU ETAP report