The GRETE consortium met for the first time in May 2019, thus the 5th consortium meeting, held on May 26th and 27th 2021, marked half-time of the international collaboration, having another 24 months of project activities ahead. Three out of the five international meetings have been held until now in remote mode, and, as the global COVID-19 situation is still causing a lot of uncertainty, the consortium decided to go for a virtual gathering also for the 6th edition, foreseen in October this year.
Fortunately, the difficulties caused by the pandemic didn’t significantly affect the research activities in GRETE: despite limitations in accessing facilities and especially the labs of the research institutes, the different partners managed to deliver the planned outputs. The interaction and collaboration between the several research teams went on smoothly across all research-streams.
The work on pulp modifications and pre-treatments allowed the chemical modification of the GRETE raw material: paper grade Eucalyptus- and Softwood Kraft pulp have been successfully modified and made available for dissolution trials and subsequents fibre spinning trials.
The dissolution and spinning trials led to first regenerated fibre samples, which were subsequently characterized and tested in order to define the most promising methods and processes for the pulp modification and pre-treatments. Whereas, the spinning bath are analysed in order to optimise the applied solvent system: the ionic liquids used in GRETE.
The work of these first 24 months is summarised in the new GRETE video, shot at VTT facilities and documenting the several steps in pursuing the consortium’s objectives: the GRETE fibre is on the way!
Find the new video in the download section of this website or watch it on YouTube here.
