VITO Vision September 2023
Cover story: MooV guides Umicore towards optimum on-site logistics
At the Umicore site in Hoboken, precious metals and other valuable metals are recovered from devices and waste substances that have been disposed of. Activity there is buzzing: tons of raw materials are being moved around on a surface area of 110 hectares, which means many transport journeys. In order to better organise these journeys, the company called upon VITO’s help, which offers a service for analysing and optimising supply chains and logistical flows called MooV. Umicore was able to map out and reduce the number of transport journeys on the site, meaning there is also less dust blowing about resulting from loading and unloading. The collaboration provided some new ideas, that Umicore will put into practice.
Kanaal Z paid a visit to Umicore; watch the video report below.
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All articles in the VITO Vision of September 2023
Every parking space is a charging spot for VITO4STARTERS winner Uze
Flexible and rapid recharging for your electric car, wherever it's parked in the city. That's what the Antwerp-based start-up Uze is offering. The company won the second edition of the VITO4STARTERS competition on the 27th of July, 2023. This competition by VITO aims to give a boost to start-ups working on sustainability.
Atlas Copco aims to embed circularity in all business operations
As of 2025, large European companies will need to identify and report their impact on the climate and their surroundings themselves. Circularity goes along with this too. VITO is presently developing a circular network for Atlas Copco. This will help with the upcoming sustainability reporting, but it will also enable the international company to monitor circularity in all its business operations, and to explore and achieve its potential. © image: Atlas Copco
Spin-off ImmuneSpec shifts up a gear thanks to the VITO Venture Studio
ImmuneSpec distinguishes itself with rapid and reliable identification of immunogenic peptides for the development of the next generation of vaccines, cancer therapies and protein medicines. This is how VITO is creating an economic and societal impact with technologies developed in-house.
Dutch SMEs test smart charging innovations at the Open Thor Living Lab
Thor Park in Genk has turned a bit orange in recent years. SMEs from the Netherlands have tested their innovations around smart charging for electric vehicles and demonstrated them as part of the ConnectSME project. In addition, they benefited from the real life environment of Genk’s ‘living lab’ to further develop their technology and concepts, ultimately to bring them to market. The project arose from the European Interreg programme, which focuses on cross-border collaboration – in this case, between Flanders and the Southern Netherlands region. Flemish SMEs with sustainable innovations were able to visit Dutch testing grounds in turn. © image: EnergyVille
A reference lab for indoor air quality
Last summer, VITO took its brand-new testing room for indoor air quality into use. They immediately started testing several air purifiers. Now we are appreciating healthy and comfortable indoor air more and more, and there is new federal legislation too, these devices are rapidly becoming popular. But in VITO’s unique testing room, plenty more tests can be carried out. For example, how unpleasant odours can be avoided and remedied in a healthy and environmentally friendly way.
We model better together: EPOC, PATHS 2050 and the future of Belgian energy
In the autumn of 2022, VITO/EnergyVille unveiled PATHS 2050 | The Power of Perspective – a platform where more than 200 researchers collaborated to chart data-driven roadmaps and potential routes for reaching a climate-neutral Belgium by 2050, at the lowest societal cost. The groundbreaking platform is deeply entrenched in the results generated by the EPOC 2030-2050 project – a five-year project that, also led by VITO/EnergyVille, brought together researchers from no less than 13 Belgian research institutions, and ended successfully in June 2023. The perfect moment to find out how EPOC 2030-2050 is contributing to a new view of our future energy in Belgium.
Hit the road with climate support
Cultivating more climate-friendly and robust crops: there is a whole arsenal of measures that farmers can implement themselves. But uncertainty over their impact on daily operations and on economic business results often still holds them back. The KLIMREK project changed that, with climate support tailored to individual Flemish agricultural firms. Through its Remote Sensing department, VITO provided the ‘geo component’, which meant that satellite and drone imagery could also be used for monitoring the participating farmers’ fields. With geo-agricultural tools such as WatchITgrow and WaterRadar, climate consultants and farmers can choose and monitor the right measures more smoothly.
NuReDrain 2.0: improvement, application and upscaling of phosphate removal
With special granules made from iron tailings originating from drinking water production, phosphates can be filtered from watery residual streams, such as drainage water from agricultural firms. This had already been demonstrated several years ago in the NuReDrain project. In a continuation of this, VITO further refined the production of the filter granules, identified some interesting applications and optimised the regeneration of the granules. The greatest challenge for the future: upscaling.
VITO employee in the spotlight: Daniele Zanaga
Daniele Zanaga (37) studied physics in Italy, but his doctoral research brought him to Belgium. At UAntwerpen, he spent many hours studying materials under the electron microscope. After obtaining his PhD, however, Zanaga broadened his scope, even literally. In early 2019, he started working as a data researcher at VITO’s Remote Sensing department. Together with his team, he is developing global land cover maps, essential for monitoring the ‘health’ of our planet.
