Project description
Sustainable solutions for Europe's green transition
The rising demand for alternative energy sources, coupled with the need to decarbonise, is driving a rapid consumption of critical raw materials vital for electronic equipment and batteries. This increase is integral to the EU’s green and digital transition. Addressing this challenge, the EU-funded AutoMat project pioneers disruptive, circular and sustainable solutions through safe and advanced recycling technologies, heralding a transformative era in meeting climate and sustainability goals. The project’s collaborative, adaptive disassembly and sorting processes prepare batteries and electronic components for reuse, significantly reducing non-reusable materials. A key highlight is its emphasis on transversal digitisation, ensuring a seamless digital exchange for efficient recycling processes in compliance with the applicable regulatory framework. AutoMat's holistic, circular approach meets Europe's urgent need for sustainable solutions.
Objective
The increasing need to find alternative energy sources, combined with the general urgency to decarbonise the way we produce, store and consume in order to meet the EU's climate and sustainability targets, is stimulating a massive and rapid use of critical raw materials, which are fundamental to the production of electrical and electronic equipment and batteries, pillars of the green and digital transition that the EU is called upon to achieve. The challenges are increasingly important given the rapidly changing geopolitical environment. AutoMat is responding to these cross-cutting and urgent challenges through the timely introduction of disruptive, holistic, circular and sustainable target-driven concepts and solutions, driven by the implementation of the following key aspects: i) High value-added recycling technologies, mainly focused on preparing batteries and EEE components (battery packs, modules, cells, parts and materials) for re-use, through the most advanced collaborative-adaptive and flexible disassembly, sorting and material recovery technologies and integrated solutions, in order to drastically reduce the amount of non-reusable parts and materials, and to return to the market with new products (including chemicals) able to meet the needs of the market ii) Transversal digitisation of solutions towards a multi-level and continuous digital data exchange and elaboration able to support new strategies of advanced and compliant separate collection to increase the quality and availability of target streams, support in real time the efficiency of recycling-reuse processes through the homogenisation of external inputs, provide always personalised and predictive information on the most appropriate operations to be applied, aiming at a massive reduction of risks and waste during handling, collection and recycling operations, provide digital passports to second life applications, to strengthen the efficiency of the outputs coming from the AutoMat global value chain.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processesrecycling
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energy
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringmining and mineral processing
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata exchange
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation ActionsCoordinator
20051 CASSINA DE' PECCHI
Italy
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.