Sustainable Technologies for Reducing Europe’s bAttery raw MaterialS dependance

Project Information

STREAMS

Grant agreement ID: 101137771

DOI

10.3030/101137771

EC signature date 13 December 2023

Start date 1 January 2024

End date 31 December 2026

Funded under

• Climate, Energy and Mobility

Total cost

€ 6 108 632,62

EU contribution

€ 6 094 993,25

Coordinated by

AIT AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GMBH
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - STREAMS (Sustainable Technologies for Reducing Europe’s bAttery raw MaterialS dependance)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The EU is currently highly dependent on importing critical and strategic raw materials for battery production such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, natural graphite and silicon. The challenges associated with these dependencies are:
1. The sourcing of raw materials from third countries makes it difficult to guarantee that global human rights and health are upheld, and children are not exploited,
2. Europe can face long-term risks associated with disruptions in battery material supply chains, and
3. Importing materials from distant countries adds to GHG emissions and shipping-related costs.
The recycling and reuse of materials, coupled with the integration of novel, secondary sources with primary sources, can ensure sustainable economic development and European strategic autonomy.

In this context, the overall objective of STREAMS is to strengthen the domestic battery materials supply chain, reduce Europe’s dependency on imported raw materials supplies and increase its resilience, competitiveness and strategic autonomy in the global battery manufacturing industry. STREAMS does this by promoting and evaluates the utilisation of different streams of primary and secondary sources together with recycled battery mass. In addition, STREAMS will develop, evaluate and demonstrate a comprehensive portfolio of flexible and scalable technologies and solutions to sustainably produce battery-grade precursors and their respective anode and cathode active materials.
STREAMS has several specific objectives related to the integration of primary, secondary and battery mass sources of into the battery materials value chain. These are:
1. Mapping of underutilized primary, secondary and recycling resources. The primary sources are spodumene (source of Li) and natural graphite. Secondary sources are mining tailings (source of Co, Ni and Mn), Bayer cake (source of Li), photovoltaic waste (source of Si) and biochar (source of conductive additives). Battery black mass is also integrated into the mapping as a source of end-of-life cathode and anode active materials.
2. Designing, developing and demonstrating 5 innovative and sustainable technologies to produce cathode precursors from secondary sources such as mining tailings, Bayer cake, and battery black mass. These technologies are selective electrowinning, sustainable hydrometallurgy, supported liquid membranes, deep eutectic solvents, and electrochemical lithium recovery
3. Developing and demonstrating 2 technologies (spray drying and direct recycling) for the synthesis of cathode active materials.
4. Designing, developing and demonstrating technologies for the recovery, reconditioning and reuse of graphite anodes from end-of-life cells, the processing of biochar into a conductive additive, and the recovery of silicon from photovoltaic waste, and the production of Si/C composite anodes.
The technologies proposed by STREAMS have an initial TRL of 3 to 4 and will move to TRL 5 towards project completion
STREAMS also addresses circularity by:
1. Identifying potential weaknesses and barriers related to technical, economic, and environmental indicators within the processes.
2. Applying the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology toward assessing carbon footprints, water use, toxicity and resource depletion.
3. Applying Safe and Sustainable by Desing (SSbD) frameworks to the STREAMS technologies and
4. Performing social LCA to assess social impacts such as on human health and well-being.
Finally, STREAMS will communicate, disseminate, and exploits its results, and develop concrete plans for industry guidance pathways and technology upscaling and uptake.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work performed and main achievements of STREAMS are:
• Several secondary streams of materials were collected, initially purified, and characterized, allowing the delivery of nickel sulphate hexahydrate, cobalt sulphate heptahydrate, manganese sulphate monohydrate, Bayer cake, silicon and biochar to the consortium for further processing to battery grade materials.
• A virtual reality teleoperation system was developed to robotically remove the upper connecting layers of the battery module as well as to handle damaged and potentially hazardous cells.
• A process was developed to cryogenically deactivate end-of-life cells, open them safely, and extract the cathode material.
• Electrowinning was performed to recover lithium as lithium metal from secondary sources.
• Innovative approaches were developed for the selective leaching of lithium from the Bayer cake using H2SO4, the selective leaching of lithium from LIB waste using NiSO4 and for the recovery of lithium as salt LiOH or Li2CO3.
• Electrochemical lithium recovery and supported liquid membrane technologies were advanced to recover Li from model solutions as well as from the leachate of the Bayer cake.
• A continuous flow processing method with enhanced sonication system was developed to improve the extraction of Li from battery black mass.
• Ni-Co alloys were produced via electrowinning, using black mass leachate solutions.
• CO, Ni and Mn sulphate crystals were precipitated from pyrite ash leachate and black mass leachate solutions.
• Supported liquid membranes (SLMs) were prepared and used to demonstrate the extraction of Co, Ni and Mn from model solutions, achieving 31.5 % Ni recovery after 90 hours, 24.4 % recovery rate of Co after 113h, and a 66% recovery rate for Mn.
• Deep eutectic solvent (DES) formulations suitable for the leaching of battery black mass were developed and optimized, with over 90% recovery rates of the mixed hydroxides.
• The recovery of graphite from black mass was demonstrated, achieving a purity 99.99 wt.% C.
• Natural graphite was transformed into battery-grade graphite with a purity of 99.99 wt.% C.
• Biochar was upgraded to a conductive additive.
• Using the nano-silicon that was prepared in the project and natural graphite, Si-C composites were prepared.
• C-coated spherodized natural graphite shows a reversible capacity of 362 mAh/g, recycled graphite obtained from 21700 cells exhibits a reversible capacity of 350 mAh/g, whereas recycled graphite C-coated 4% has a reversible capacity of 340 mAh/g, all at C/5.
• Biochar, which was converted into conductive additive, was tested as such in NMC811 cathodes using both NMP and water-based processing. No differences were observed in the performance of the NMC811 cathodes where commercial conductive additives were used.
• Recycled graphite was coated into electrodes at pilot scale using water-based processing.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Since the summary considers only results from the first reporting period, the potential impacts cannot be adequately addressed, as the technologies and processes are not yet mature. However, as the STREAMS project progresses, results will be generated that will have positive impacts for the scientific and technological communities.