The European NWE - REGENERATIS project
Developed as part of the European Interreg North-West Europe programme, working with public and private Belgian, German, French and British partners, NWE – REGENERATIS (REGENERATIon and Rehabilitation of post-metallurgical sites through the recovery of resources) 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. SPAQUE is the leader of this project.
In practical terms, 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 at least one in Wallonia.
The results will be tested at three pilot sites located in Teeside in the United Kingdom, Pompey in France and La Louvière in Belgium.
Many European partners
Belgium
The Applied Geophysics Unit in the ARGENCO Department of the University of Liège, the CTP (Centre Technologique International de la Terre et de la Pierre), the consultancy firm ARTASOL, Duferco, the public company OVAM, and SPAQUE
France
The BRGM (Geological and Mining Research Office), the private engineering firm IXSANE, the YNCREA federation, and the TEAM2 competitiveness cluster for recycling
United Kingdom
The MPI (Materials Processing Institute) public research centre and Cranfield University
Germany
The University of Cologne and BAV, the public body responsible for waste management
In total, 35 public and private organisations throughout Europe have joined the project as observers. The Walloon Government (land use planning department) and Bruxelles Environnement (Brussels-Capital Region) have agreed to join the project as members of the Advisory Board.
For the first time, the main public players in the field of decontamination of brownfield sites (OVAM, Bruxelles Environnement and SPAQuE) in the three regions of Belgium (Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia) have come together in the same European project.
