PNO Italy Series

In this episode of The Grant Collaborations, produced in collaboration with PNO Italy, I’m joined by Francesca di Bartolomeo from SINTEF and Anna Franciosini from PNO Italy to unpack what happens between a successful proposal and a real running project. Using PYROCO2 as the case, we go back to the start: a multidisciplinary base inside SINTEF, earlier national and collaborative projects, strong industrial networks and a shared ambition to push CO2 utilisation closer to industrial reality. Francesca explains how the project grew from years of work in biotechnology, process technology and chemistry, while Anna reflects on the proposal phase from the consultancy side: shaping the impact section, framing the broader European relevance and helping position the project in relation to market needs and the call topic.

From there we move into implementation. PYROCO2 is not just about proving something on the bench; it is about scaling up and building a real demonstration environment. Francesca explains the project’s core idea in simple terms: taking CO2 as a waste stream and, through biotechnology and catalysis, turning it into a more valuable molecule that can feed future industrial processes. The consortium has now moved from smaller-scale work towards a large demonstration set-up, with a new lab under construction at SINTEF and 20-cubic-metre reactors planned as part of the technology scale-up. Anna then shows the other side of the story: how PNO works on dissemination, exploitation, replication, stakeholder mapping and technology intelligence so that the project’s results have a chance to live beyond the grant. Together, the episode becomes a practical conversation about proposal logic, consortium collaboration, industrial innovation and the long road from an excellent application to something that might actually matter in the real world.

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