PITCCH has launched the third round of corporate challenges

The PITCCH project aims to increase the competitiveness of European industries by building a Pan-European Open Innovation Network where technology centres act as intermediaries to facilitate the establishment of structured collaborations between big corporations as technology seekers with small and medium-sized enterprises as technology providers and this way accelerate the market uptake of advanced technologies through different sectors.

The PITCCH Network will facilitate the process of finding the best solution providers from across Europe and enable big corporations to choose the finalists at the pitch day when selected SMEs and start-ups will have the opportunity to pitch their solutions in front of the big corporations. Qualified technology centres will contribute to these open innovation projects by offering their brokerage services. The deadline for SMEs and startups to submit their technical solutions is 19 April 2022.

Four technological challenges have been chosen from four different big corporations:

Challenge by GALP: Exploring new Energy Aggregation Solutions for Galp – Peer 2 Peer energy trading

GALP is an energy company and an emerging electricity retailer in Portugal and Spain. It is seeking a tech-SME or a startup to develop a digital solution, like an online marketplace, for supporting  the implementation of novel business models related to distributed energy resources (DER) aggregation, such as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) electricity trading, that would add value to their current portfolio. P2P trading empowers producers and consumers, leading to increased customer engagement/satisfaction, greater grid flexibility, and increased renewables penetration in the energy mix, besides increasing energy savings.

Challenge by Eternis Fine Chemicals: Creating value through biotransformation of 'aroma waste'

Eternis is a global manufacturer of flavour and fragrance compounds. The corporate is looking for a SME or start-up to create value from the ‘aroma’ by-product that is generated during their manufacturing process and normally incinerated as waste. They seek a biotransformation approach to reduce the amount of material that is normally sent to be burnt and by doing so reduce their carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions.

Challenge by Repsol: Valorization of lignin to chemicals or materials in an integrated biorefinery

Repsol is a global multi-energy provider. The company is seeking a SME or start-up who can offer a technology that converts lignin. In biorefineries converting lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol, one of the by-products is lignin, which is currently valorized to energy for the operation of the process. Being a chemically valuable and complex material, alternatives are being sought to convert lignin into green products or materials that improve the economic performance of the biorefinery without worsening the carbon footprint.

Challenge by MANN+HUMMEL GmbH: Aerosol sensor to detect harmful pesticide concentrations in vehicle cabins

MANN+HUMMEL is a leading global company in filtration technology with two business units Transportation and Life Sciences & Environment. The corporate is looking for an SME or a start-up that can develop a sensor to detect critical pesticide concentrations inside the cabin of tractors and other agricultural vehicles and which can distinguish between regular aerosols (e.g. water droplets) and hazardous pesticide aerosols. The new sensor will be an essential part of the in-cabin air quality monitoring systems, giving peace of mind to the tractor operator, controlling the operating mode of the ventilation system, detecting the status of the cabin air filter and providing maintenance recommendations for the air filter system.

Submit your solution to the Challenge at this application link.