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START Consortium Meeting, 6 & 7 June 2024, Oslo, Norway

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The 2024 annual START meeting was held during the 6th and 7th June 2024 in Oslo, Norway, with partner SINTEF hosting the meeting. The meeting was dedicated to the status and future steps of the work being developed under the seven work packages, which include Work Package 7 – Innovation and Exploitation strategy, led by La Palma Research Centre. The main goal of START is to build an innovation ecosystem in the European Union (EU) related to the development of sustainable and economically viable tellurium-free thermoelectric (TE) energy harvesting systems based on innovative mine waster recycling, to be applied in heavy industry for waste heat recovery and also as primary power source for energy harvesting for wearables, buildings, off-grid sensors and IoT devices.

The first day was dedicated to technical presentations, which were complemented with a workshop hosted by LPRC for data collection on commercial and feasibility aspects of the START technological developments. Collected parameters will feed into development of Task 7.2 – Industrial viability and economics.

The second day had technical presentations, the 5th START webinar, and another workshop hosted by LPRC, this time dedicated to sustainability of the START project after the funding period. First, LPRC presented the status and future steps in WP7, then the workshop was hosted connected to Task 7.4 – Sustainability and Deployment. During this workshop exercise, participants (project partners and advisory board representative) were asked to provide their ideas for the “START Service Company” in a Lean Canvas (a tool used for business planning purposes).

This was a great meeting and the perfect opportunity for LPRC to prepare its future work in Work Package 7.

Stay tuned for upcoming news on the project. Meanwhile, follow the project news on the website, Twitter and LinkedIn channels!

EPMA

START Project Annual Meeting, Madrid, May & June 2023

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The LPRC team joined its counterparts in the START project for the Project Annual Meeting, hosted in Madrid by IGME-CSIC. This meeting was held on the 30th, 31st May and 1st June 2023.

This was the first time that the START consortium met in person after last year’s Kick-off meeting. The meeting agenda for this 2023 event involved discussions on the status of the project (by Work Package), a Focus Group session on the future of thermoelectics and the hosting of the 3rd START webinar. The main topics of discussion during these 3 days were the selection and preparation of tetrahedrites (an abundant mine waste mineral that will be used in the project), materials modelling, processing and characterisation, and the sustainable device production, validation and demonstration.

LPRC was responsible for the Work Package 7 presentation on Innovation and exploitation strategy where the team discussed the current and future efforts for designing a new thermoelectrics value chain adapted to the START technological developments, as well as for hosting the Focus Groups session that counted with project technological leaders and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board – Doug Crane (DTP Thermoelectrics).

During the Focus Groups sessions, the LPRC team asked questions related to the current and future possibilities of the START project and of the scientific fields of relevance – thermoelectrics, materials and mining. Each participant answered to the questions with their own views. Data was collected by the moderators and will now be used to further define the future START value chain.