A Material Passport Ontology for a circular economy

Md Hanif Seddiqui; Feroz Farazi; Fausto Giunchiglia; Mayukh Bagchi; Simone Bocca; Jethro Akroyd; Sebastian Mosbach; Farhadur Arifin; Rasel Ahmed; Miah Arman; Laura Di Cesare; Andrea Pipino; Ural Halaçoğlu; Zeynep Korkmaz; Tanvir Islam; Kasparas Kižys; Donatas Gendvilas; Aydogan Berkay; Sema Yildiz; Markus Kraft

doi:10.1016/j.compind.2026.104465

A Material Passport Ontology for a circular economy

Md Hanif Seddiqui
, Feroz Farazi
, Fausto Giunchiglia
, Mayukh Bagchi
, Simone Bocca
, Jethro Akroyd
, Sebastian Mosbach
, Farhadur Arifin
, Rasel Ahmed
, Miah Arman
, Laura Di Cesare
, Andrea Pipino
, Ural Halaçoğlu
, Zeynep Korkmaz
, Tanvir Islam
, Kasparas Kižys
, Donatas Gendvilas
, Aydogan Berkay
, Sema Yildiz
, Markus Kraft^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of Computer Science and Digital Technologies

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Citations (SciVal)

1 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a Material Passport Ontology (MPO), which is designed to enable the interoperability of material passport data across stakeholders, including manufacturers, suppliers, collectors, and recyclers. The MPO provides a novel unifying ontological infrastructure for representing the properties of products and recycling processes. These properties are essential for estimating the potential recycled yield and enabling the stakeholders to make informed decisions about the feasibility of recycling. The ontology was co-created with industrial stakeholders, following a pragmatic ontology development method. The MPO is organised into facets describing the physical properties, composition and circularity, biological and other properties of products, components and materials. A set of constraints was developed to address the non-conformant syntactic or value range inconsistencies identified by the industrial stakeholders. These inconsistencies occurred in properties such as international product identification numbers and mass-related properties represented in a material passport knowledge graph. The information provided by the knowledge graph enables the assessment of the circularity of products, components and materials. The MPO was validated using reasoning tools and in collaboration with domain experts from industrial partners representing two use cases: the manufacture of components for motor vehicles and blades for wind turbines. These use cases demonstrate its effectiveness and applicability in identifying recyclable materials, maximising resource reuse, and enhancing sustainability practices, thereby facilitating the transition to a circular economy.

Original language	English
Article number	104465
Number of pages	15
Journal	Computers in Industry
Volume	178
Early online date	11 Mar 2026
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2026.104465
Publication status	Published - 1 Jul 2026

Bibliographical note

Data Access Statement

Archival machine-readable versions of the ontology, specification document, knowledge graph validator and SHACL constraints are available via the University of Cambridge data repository. See 10.17863/CAM.111136. A living version of the ontology is available via https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheWorldAvatar/mpo/refs/heads/main/MPO.owland the documentation is available via https://theworldavatar.github.io/mpo/. The data used to populate the material passport framework contains confidential information, protected by a non-disclosure agreement covering Horizon Europe grant 101058732 and UKRI grant 10038588. This data cannot be made available. However, a material passport for a crossbeam, created with synthetic data in consultation with industrial partners, is made available at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheWorldAvatar/mpo/refs/heads/main/MPO_Instantiated_ChassisCrossbeam.owl to allow interested practitioners to perform SPARQL queries that require an ABox. To execute SPARQL queries against the MPO or its instantiation, Protégé can be used. An example of query execution is shown in the Supplementary Information. The knowledge graph validator is available at https://github.com/TheWorldAvatar/kgvalidator, along with documentation describing how to use it in both automated and manual modes. The defined SHACL constraints are available at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheWorldAvatar/kgvalidator/refs/heads/main/data/shacl_constraints.ttl.

Funding

This research was supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant 101058732 (JIDEP) and the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) under grant 10038588.

Funders	Funder number
European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme	101058732
UK Research and Innovation	10038588

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production

Keywords

Circular economy
Material Passport Ontology
Motor vehicles
Recycling
Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL)
Wind turbines

Access to Document

10.1016/j.compind.2026.104465Licence: CC BY 4.0

A Material Passport Ontology for a circular economy
Copyright © 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Final published version, 2.87 MBLicence: CC BY 4.0

Cite this

Seddiqui, M. H., Farazi, F., Giunchiglia, F., Bagchi, M., Bocca, S., Akroyd, J., Mosbach, S., Arifin, F., Ahmed, R., Arman, M., Cesare, L. D., Pipino, A., Halaçoğlu, U., Korkmaz, Z., Islam, T., Kižys, K., Gendvilas, D., Berkay, A., Yildiz, S., & Kraft, M. (2026). A Material Passport Ontology for a circular economy. Computers in Industry, 178, Article 104465. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2026.104465

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Seddiqui, MH, Farazi, F, Giunchiglia, F, Bagchi, M, Bocca, S, Akroyd, J, Mosbach, S, Arifin, F, Ahmed, R, Arman, M, Cesare, LD, Pipino, A, Halaçoğlu, U, Korkmaz, Z, Islam, T, Kižys, K, Gendvilas, D, Berkay, A, Yildiz, S & Kraft, M 2026, 'A Material Passport Ontology for a circular economy', Computers in Industry, vol. 178, 104465. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2026.104465

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AU - Akroyd, Jethro

AU - Mosbach, Sebastian

AU - Arifin, Farhadur

AU - Ahmed, Rasel

AU - Arman, Miah

AU - Cesare, Laura Di

AU - Pipino, Andrea

AU - Halaçoğlu, Ural

AU - Korkmaz, Zeynep

AU - Islam, Tanvir

AU - Kižys, Kasparas

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KW - Recycling

KW - Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL)

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A Material Passport Ontology for a circular economy

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Data Access Statement

Funding

UN SDGs

Keywords

Access to Document

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Cite this