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One of our biggest challenges right now is to shift towards a sustainable means of transportation, and electric vehicles are seen as one of the best ways to decarbonise the transportation sector.
Lithium-ion batteries are predominant in electric vehicles. Although they represent a significant advantage compared to fossil fuel solutions, they pose some obstacles, namely their needs in critical raw materials, or their difficulty to be reused.
The extraction process of Li-ion battery elements, namely iron, copper, nickel, lithium, and cobalt is very resource-demanding and scars natural landscapes. The disposal of those metals also presents an issue, as they can be toxic and contaminate the water supplies and ecosystems.
Recycling technology is still at the lab-scale, due to the complex structure of End-of-life Li-ion batteries. Current processes also prove to be costly, and are therefore usually disregarded for not being economically efficient enough compared to mining new materials.
FREE4LIB, a Horizon Europe-funded project, is thus developing 21 technologies covering the entire li-ion battery value chain, to achieve sustainable and efficient processes in recycling end-of-life li-ion batteries.
Over the span of four years, our new processes will deliver innovative recycling solutions to reach efficient materials recovery in high amounts and thus improving the supply of secondary resources at EU level.
FREE4LIB will also optimise processes and traceability thanks to a new Battery Passport (BP) methodology, and Open Platforms for the BP and Data-driven models.
This newsletter is one of the many ways in which FREE4LIB participates in the work towards a greener and circular transport sector, and we wish you will find it informative - subscribe for more updates on our project!
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