R4R Fuel Cell Conference in Szczecin

A conference on 'Fuel cells – energy and transportation – design, prototyping, implementation' is to be held in Szczecin, Poland on 22 April 2015. The event is supported by the SusChem inspired FP7 project Chemical Regions for Resource Efficiency (R4R) and will bring together all the important actors along the hydrogen and fuel cell value chain in Europe.


The conference will cover all aspects of the hydrogen and fuel cell value chain. Opening presentations will describe the development of hydrogen powered public transport in Szczecin and give an overview of the progress in fuel cells, before looking at the value chain in detail during the main morning session. After lunch the focus moves onto technical solutions.

The agenda for the conference can be downloaded here.

Currently over 60 attendees from six different countries will be joining the event. To book your place contact the conference organisers with your contact details (name, organization, email). The deadline for registration is 15 April 2015.

About R4R
Launched in late 2012, R4R is funded for three years under the European Commission’s FP7 Research and Innovation Framework Programme. The ‘Chemical Regions for Resource Efficiency (R4R)’ project aims to overcome fragmentation of European ambitious and innovative regions. Through its methodology, R4R could lead the path to a range of promising and positive impacts on resource efficiency.

R4R brings together six complementary EU Regions (Aragon in Spain, Göteborg in Sweden, North Rhine–Westphalia in Germany, the Port of Rotterdam and the South-West regions in the Netherlands, and West Pomerania in Poland), each with their own public and private research and innovation expertise. The R4R project aims to achieve a major step improvement in regional and transnational cooperation among its participating regions and will develop practices, tools and examples which can be easily disseminated to and adopted by multiple European regions to improve regional and cross-regional collaboration in general, and in the process industry on resource efficiency in particular.

R4R will create a platform for international collaboration on resource efficiency with clusters in third countries to improve and accelerate innovation and promote European eco-innovative technologies globally. To find out more visit the R4R website.

Warsaw to showcase SusChem FP7 success

When the European Commission’s FP7 Programme was launched in 2007 its aim was to increase productivity and economic growth through innovation. SusChem had already developed its Strategic Research Agenda to promote collaborative Research, Development and Innovation between European industry and academia in the fields of Industrial Biotechnology, Materials Technology and Reaction and Process Design and many of its ideas and concepts were incorporated into the initial calls for FP7. Now these initial FP7 projects are being competed.

To celebrate the successful conclusion of these initial ‘SusChem inspired’ projects, SusChem is organising an event in collaboration with SusChem Poland under the patronage of the Polish Presidency of the EU to share the outcomes of three successful SusChem FP7 projects that all included Polish participants.

The event, which takes place at Warsaw University on 18 October is entitled ‘SusChem’s FP7 Success Stories: Creating economic value through effective collaboration’ and will feature FP7 projects: EUMET, EFECTS and INTENANT.

The projects
EUMET (Design, Development, Utilization and Commercialization Of Olefin Metathesis Catalysts). Led by St Andrews University in the UK, EUMET has developed a range of novel olefin metathesis catalysts which exceed the state of the art. The first example has already been scaled-up by industrial partner Umicore and is available from chemical research catalogues. Improved olefin metathesis catalysts have also been discovered and approved for the synthesis of a Janssen Pharmaceuticals drug currently in Phase III clinical trials.

INTENANT (Integrated synthesis and purification of single enantiomers). Coorodinated by Max Planck Institute, Magdeburg in Germany the project has looked to simplify the synthesis, purification and yields of enantiomeric substances for the pharmaceutical industry. In partnership with AstraZeneca, Bayer Technical Services and Molisa improved process technologies have been developed and applied to the development each of the company’s development pipelines. Training in the application of the methodologies is being rolled-out across the companies and is changing how they perform their candidate drug pipeline development. A spin-out company FGEN has also been formed which uses the technology developed in INTENANT to develop optimized biocatalysts.

EFECTS (Efficient Environmental-Friendly Electro-Ceramics Coating Technology and Synthesis) was coordinated by the University of Ghent in Belgium and has advanced the use of ink-jet printing technology to develop functional electro-ceramic coatings which have been incorporated into commercial products as diverse as high-temperature superconductors for Zenergy Power’s wind turbines and Nanophos’s self-cleaning ceramic tiles.

The SusChem Newsblog will be featuring case studies from further ‘SusChem inspired’ collaborative projects over the next few months.

SusChem – key to chemistry
This event will bring together European policy-makers, politicians, industry and academia to discuss to share the benefits and impacts that have resulted though collaboration in these and other FP7 projects and discuss best practice for maximising commercial impact from collaboration.

In addition speakers from the European Commission will outline the FP7’s successor programme: Horizon 2020. And SusChem representatives, including Prof Rodney Townsend, will describe the vision and strategy that the technology platform will be taking to maximise the benefits of sustainable chemistry for the chemical community, the European Union and its citizens.

More information
For more information on the Warsaw SusChem Success event take a look at the SusChem website. In particular you can find the agenda for the event here and can register directly for the event here.

For further information and specific queries please contact the SusChem secretariat.