Abstract
BATMASS aims to implement the first EU Interregional Circular Battery Valley. It offers a portfolio of cross-regional investments in TRL6+ innovations in circular technologies and processes for battery materials. The aim answers to the challenge of a battery supply chain under pressure, with growing demand of supply and heavy dependence on foreign streams of critical materials. This is a crucial issue for EU competitiveness as exposure to price volatility and limited sovereignty is extremely high. BATMASS mobilises an integrated interregional ecosystem around 4 Demonstrators meant to scale up, commercialise and deploy breakthrough GreenTech.
BATMASS consortium encompasses actors from the quadruple helix, stemming from the regional ecosystems of more developed, transition and less developed regions (i.e. Andalucía, Aquitaine, Aragón, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Comunitat Valenciana Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Castilla–La Mancha, Castilla-y-Leon, Ile-de-France, Lazio, Limousin, Lombardia, Nord-Pas de Calais, Rhône-Alpes and Zahodna Slovenija). RTOs and Clusters are considered as support engines to private-led demonstrators, aligning S3 strategies to grow a resilient battery materials supply chain and green both our mobility and industry. The value of such approach is critical to position regions at the heart of the relocation of production capacity back to the EU. Partners include RTOs, innovative SMEs and large companies leading the Demonstrators. The project builds on prior collaboration such as the Digiprime project (GA 873111).
BATMASS aims to implement the first EU Circular Battery Valley and it promotes integrated product, process, service, and business model innovation. It offers a portfolio of cross-regional investments in TRL6+ innovations in circular technologies and processes for battery materials. BATMASS mobilises an integrated interregional ecosystem around 4 Demonstrators (or ‘Demo lighthouses’) meant to scale up, commercialise and deploy breakthrough GreenTech. It taps into the innovation power of RTOs and SMEs to accelerate market entry and international replication across EU regions and beyond. Tech transfers between less developed, transition and developed regions is expected to structure this emerging value chain and anchor it into regional innovation ecosystems. BATMASS aims to scale up a cross-regional portfolio of circular innovations meant to turn by-products into battery- grade materials. It will do so by pooling top-notch capabilities along a fully integrated cross-regional chain of demonstrators. The project invests into innovative circular capabilities to bend the extraction yield of raw materials from exhausted batteries and improve the Union’s resilience (reduced dependence on foreign input streams) as well as its environmental footprint.
BATMASS encompasses 4 Demonstrators along the battery value chain, established in Lombardy, Castilla la Mancha and Rhone-Alps. Further detail is available below:
- Pilot 1: Advanced reverse logistics for batteries recycling: This pilot is providing the first large-scale interregional demo on advanced reverse logistics for batteries recycling, capable of integrating advanced digitalization and manufacturing technologies for creating specific supply-chain, able to collect across Europe EoL batteries from different origins (e.g.: waste firms, end-users, etc.) in the most efficient and eco-designed way.
- Pilot 2: Advanced manufacturing pilot for products giving a second life to batteries: A two fold pilot based on; i) innovative and new digital advanced manufacturing and scalable battery test pilot to identify and sort used batteries for a second life, and ii) a new product manufacturing bench pilot to design a new elementary and universal storage system to be implemented by SMEs or home users for small and intermediate energy storages (5 to 500kWh).
- Pilot 3: Recovery of raw materials from battery Blackmass: a sustainable and low cost black mass recovery process that makes it possible to carry out the physical pretreatments and allow the extraction of all the high-interest elements from EoL batteries.
- Pilot 4: Production testing facility for new generation batteries using recycled materials, a highly innovative digital and fully automatic pilot integrating recycled raw materials as feedstock for cathode materials, involving innovative technologies (TRL 7) for manufacturing high quality PRE/CAM materials from recycled materials with high stability.
BATMASS will scale up and commercialise solutions that can significantly reduce the environmental footprint of the battery industry and paves the way towards compliance of the European battery industry with the upcoming Battery Regulation that will enter in action starting Year 2027. This includes developing efficient closed-loop recycling methods for integration of locally processed battery-grade materials into new Li-ion battery cells and promoting the reuse of batteries though two complementary second-life business cases, focusing on cells and modules reuse. All in all, these innovations will enhance the sustainability of the EU battery industry, increase resilience towards material market price oscillations and supply by suppliers from outside Europe. . The Circular battery valley will:
- Produce an exhaustive and analytical mapping of the circular battery landscape.
- Activate key intermediaries to setup the ground for CBV communities' on-boarding.
- Actively engage with and on-board the priority target communities of BATMASS: SMES, Corporates, RTOs, Policymakers, and Investors.
- Initiate new cross-regional collaboration opportunities within the area of circular battery innovations.
- Establish a bridge between all communities of the CBV to further unlock the provision of risk capital for cross-regional innovation investments and overcome current barriers standing in the way of the EU Circular Battery value chain.