EnergyFirst

EnergyFirst theme investigates and developes technologies to radically reduce the energy need of processes used in the production of bio-based fibre materials. As the third biggest industrial energy user in EU, the impact of low energy technologies would be significant, both in terms of energy resilience and sustainability. Also, the selected developments are based on reducing the use of fresh water in the process - resulting in reduced drying energy input - and therefore address simultaneously the issue of fresh water adequacy. The key technologies are high-consistency processing used for 3D printing of fibre foams, dry-forming of fibre products, with several specific research questions like dry disintegration and pre-treatment of fibres, forming and strength creation by bonding.