Description du projet
Relever le défi des matières premières critiques en Europe
L’Europe est confrontée à un besoin crucial de matières premières critiques (MPC) pour mener à bien sa transition vers une énergie verte, en vue d’atteindre la neutralité climatique d’ici 2050. Les composants essentiels tels que les panneaux photovoltaïques et les batteries dépendent fortement des MPC. Les méthodes de recyclage traditionnelles ne permettent toutefois pas d’exploiter leur plein potentiel. Dans ce contexte, le projet SOLMATE, financé par l’UE, se propose d’établir une nouvelle chaîne de valeur industrielle pour la réutilisation et le recyclage durables des panneaux solaires photovoltaïques et des batteries des véhicules électriques. SOLMATE se concentre sur le développement de systèmes énergétiques décentralisés à faible coût et de technologies respectueuses de l’environnement afin d’améliorer la récupération des matériaux. Conformément aux principes de la hiérarchie des déchets, SOLMATE s’efforce d’assurer la prévention, la réutilisation, le recyclage, la récupération et l’élimination des déchets, pour un avenir plus vert.
Objectif
Europe is on the need of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) to secure its green energy transition and achieve climate neutrality by 2050. PV panels for clean energy generation, and batteries for energy storage are key components for the green energy transition but heavily depending on CRMs. However, as the PV and EV markets were developing fast in the last decade in Europe, significant amount of secondary EV batteries, and PV panels will be available for recycling. Traditional approaches that have been used so far for their recycling are focused on materials recovery, and less on the enormous potential for reuse in second life before recycling. Additionally, proposed recycling processes so far are still suffering from several issues related to purity and efficiency of the processes as well as high cost and environmental aspects.
The overarching aim of the SOLMATE project is to set up solid foundations of a new industrial value chain for the sustainable reuse and recycling of PV solar panels and EV batteries in interesting emerging markets and high added value applications. The main objectives of SOLMATE are on one hand i) to develop and demonstrate viable and guaranteed low-cost decentralised energy systems for different emerging markets and business cases based on the reuse of batteries from EoL EV and used PV solar panels (i.e. repowering from PV farms), and on the other hand, ii) to demonstrate low cost and environmentally friendly technologies for improving the purity and increasing the recovery of raw materials (especially critical raw materials) from EoL EV batteries and PV that cannot be reused.
SOLMATE is designed to be fully aligned with the “waste hierarchy” principles as indicated in the Waste Framework Directive (Prevention, Reuse, Recycling, Recovery, Disposal).
Champ scientifique
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processesrecycling
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energy
- social sciencessocial geographytransportelectric vehicles
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringmining and mineral processing
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Programme(s)
Régime de financement
HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation ActionsCoordinateur
2400 Mol
Belgique