Research > Funded Research Projects > NWE-REGENERATIS Project

NWE-REGENERATIS project

Regeneration of past metallurgical sites and deposits through innovative circularity for raw materials.

Project Summary

Developed as part of the European Interreg North-West Europe programme, working with public and private Belgian, German, French and British partners, NWE – REGENERATIS involves recovering materials and metals on former steel sites, thus helping to reduce rehabilitation costs. Its ultimate goal is the design and implementation of a new economic model that is easy for public and private companies to put into practice and allows for the reintegration of raw materials and land into the regional economy.

NWE-REGENERATIS focuses on solutions for the remediation of contaminated Past Metallurgical Sites and Deposits (PMSD) in Northwest Europe.

The main groups targeted by the project are:

• Organisations responsible for decontaminating sites contaminated by metallic industrial wastes.
• Organisations in charge of their redevelopment.

Objectives

• Increase the reuse of raw materials from past metallurgical sites and deposits
• Evaluate the feasibility and economic potential for raw material recovery and site remediation using innovative Artificial Intelligence Tools
• Provide knowledge and decision support tools to screen past metallurgical sites and deposits
• Recover valuable materials
• Create jobs

The NWE – REGENERATIS project involves:

• The development of a common, resource-based inventory framework for former metallurgical stores, based on existing inventories in the countries of North-West Europe.
• The innovative pairing of historical and geophysical methods of analysis and investigation of metallurgical sites to collect missing data, in order to optimise soil analysis costs and reduce the time required for the studies.
• The development of an open-source 4D SMART tool (SMARTIX) based on an artificial intelligence algorithm.
• A phase to demonstrate the material recovery processes through pilot tests and large-scale work on various sites, including a site located in Teesside.

The results will be tested at three pilot sites located in Teesside in the United Kingdom, Pompey in France and La Louvière in Belgium.

Partners