Major challenge: high costs and high energy consumption for industry in membrane distillation and nanofiltration.

Development of green tax/eco tax scenarios

Assess market and conditions for industrial pilots (currently an ongoing collaboration on a first pilot with an automotive batteries manufacturing company within EU R&I Actions METALLICO)

Techno-economic analysis in industrial scale (currently only lab-scale assessments are available)

Substitution of vacuum salt by high-quality NaCl brine in desalination processes (from seawater to clean water)

Development of decarbonization processes to avoid evaporation/crystallization of critical raw materials

Business case for a chemical company e.g., on e-waste battery recovery processes

Reduction of acidic mining or acidic mines’ treatment processes

Recovery of materials as fertilizes for soils (developing further collaboration with the University of Palermo in Italy)

Economic evaluation of critical and strategic raw materials recovery

Developing scenarios for upscaling of industrial decarbonization processes (e.g. with Veolia (France), mining companies in Australia (e.g., BHP), energy companies (with expertise on heating and cooling in Finland); and water purification processes (e.g., with industry partners in USA – e.g., RIOTINTO)

Reducing energy consumption in nanofiltration processes

Lithium recovery from battery waste (currently, only experiments were done on the lab scale, but not tested with the industry

Potential collaboration with companies such as industrial projects with RIOTINTO (Serbia), Lithium-Iberia (Spain) and Savannah (Portugal).