Project: Processing waste battery scrap into high entropy transition metal oxides for next generation Li-ion batteries

Acronym	HETMOLION (Reference Number: 75)
Duration	01/04/2024 - 01/12/2026
Project Topic	At the core of new lithium battery technologies is the design of active electrode materials with desired properties. Depending on the prospective end-user, emphasis of these efforts may be put on specific energy, rate capability, cyclic stability, safety, cost, or a combination of the aforementioned. New materials must also always be designed with careful consideration of sustainability, understood as cost, accessibility and potential environmental impact of raw materials/precursors used for their fabrication. HETMOLION is an industry needsdriven project takes the above issues into consideration and focuses on novel materials that have the potential of being intrinsically safer, do not pose sustainability problems and thus, may be regarded as future alternative to some of the currently well-established Li-ion technologies, especially (but by no means limited to) for such applications as public electric transportation. The overall objective of the project is to strengthen circular dimension of European battery industry by developing a family of novel sustainable anode materials for next-generation of durable and safe-by-design Li-ion batteries. Those new materials will be based on a recent concept of high entropy transition metal oxides (HETMO) and will contain several metallic elements, at least 80% of which could be obtained from processed waste batteries, thus minimizing the need of using primary raw materials, instead making usage of vast urban waste depository. After optimization, the materials’ usability will be demonstrated in prototype Li-ion pouch cells. The whole project idea is meant to follow the circular economy approach which will be demonstrated with the application of suitable LCA tools. Thus, overall approach can be summarized as proposing novel material concept that will be both competitive in terms of operational properties and aligned with strict sustainability and circularity requirements.
Network	ERA-MIN3
Call	ERA-MIN3 Joint Call 2023

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Lukasiewicz Research Network - Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals	Coordinator	Poland
2	Institute of Science and Innovation in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering	Partner	Portugal
3	University of the Witwatersrand	Partner	South Africa
4	National Research and Development Institute for Non - ferrous and Rare Metals	Partner	Romania
5	Eneris Polbatt	Partner	Poland