Itainnova will participate in two European H2020 innovation projects linked to covid-19

The Technological Institute of Aragon (Itainnova) will actively participate in two of the 23 projects approved by the European Commission within the framework of the call launched last May called Covid-19 H2020, aimed at the development of European technological solutions that allow us to face it with greater guarantees an epidemic like the one we are experiencing. One of them is related to medical supplies and the other, to the production and supply chain of equipment used by healthcare workers to deal with covid-19.

«Itainnova technicians will be included in European work teams where innovative technologies will be developed and put into practice for the design or adaptation of manufacturing lines aimed at the production of medical and healthcare equipment and consumables necessary for a best European response to a crisis such as Covid-19," Esther Borao, director of Itainnova, told this newspaper yesterday, who celebrated the opportunity to be among the companies and technology centers that will work on these initiatives, which encompass a budget of 128,2 million euros and involving teams from 40 countries inside and outside Europe.

Medical supplies

One of the projects, imPURE, "addresses the problem of shortages of certain medical supplies that have occurred in Europe due to the breakdown or slowdown of supply chains on a global scale," Borao explained. In order to address supply shortages, particularly medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE), he recalled, some countries have employed less traditional instruments such as providing incentives for manufacturing companies to reuse existing capacities. . This is where the imPURE initiative comes in, which will focus on medical consumables manufactured in injection molding. In fact, according to the director of Itaionnova, "imPURE's main objective is to reuse and digitally transform industrial plastics processing lines in Europe, initially focusing on injection molding, for the production of critical medical consumables with a unprecedentedly reduced delivery time (from 3 weeks to 48 hours).” The participation of the Aragón Technological Institute team will consist of optimizing the modeling of the injection process and mold design, as well as the development of intelligent and flexible control and monitoring systems for the injection molding process based on digital twins.

The second of the projects in which Itainnova will participate, called Co-Versatile, pursues the adaptation and reuse of a set of existing technologies and services to increase the adaptation capacity of the European manufacturing industry. According to Borao, these services and technologies will be demonstrated in 7 manufacturing environments to produce vital medical equipment and then generalized for replication at the European level. «The goal of these demonstrators is the creation of manufacturing solutions that enable a flexible 48-hour industrial response capability, to address sudden spikes in demand for strategic products, for requalification or liberation of manufacturing environments, including the possibility of manufacturing completely new products," he said.

With an Aragonese SME

In this project, Itainnova participates in developing advanced injection process simulation technologies that will be demonstrated in an industrial case of mask manufacturing. Likewise, together with the Aragonese SME Eurodenker-Tecnobio, also a partner in the project, it will develop and adapt new efficient electrostatic spraying systems for disinfectants to fight against covid.

"In order to transfer technology and knowledge to companies in Aragon, we need our technicians to be continually updated, as well as to have facilities and laboratories where they can be deployed and experiment with new technologies," stated Borao when evaluating Itainnova's participation in these initiatives.