SUMMARY

To enable a major shift to bring transportation and power to greenhouse gas neutrality the coupling of both sectors for the first time in history is mandatory: batteries can enable 30% of the required reductions in carbon emissions in the transport and power sectors. However, the supply of raw metals for batteries is precarious because of the limited natural reserves of several raw materials and their local distribution. Thus, technologies that can stably secure strategic metals must be developed, for example, urban mining, which allows the recovery of metals from secondary sources. However, at the moment, the waste recovery processes of battery wastes are complicated and require high resource consumption in terms of energies and chemicals necessary for metal extraction. The CARAMEL (“New CArbothermic approaches to Recovery criticAl MEtalsfrom spent Lithium-ions batteries”) project introduces innovative approaches, which will be optimized and transferred to an industrial level (TRL 6) to provide an alternative route to respond to the increasing demand for raw materials for batteries and guarantee a second life to the corresponding waste. The method is based on new recently patented hybrid-heating technology, using a dedicated oven, supported by microwave irradiation.

The CARAMEL project aims to reach the new 2030 regulatory target proposed by the EU on batteries waste, with more than 95% of lithium and cobalt recovery in a sustainable way, translating the EU’s sustainable development goals into innovative technologies. This will be also the drive to the development of a national market for spent batteries, which are currently sent abroad and not recycled in Italy.

Project WPs are reported in the following figure

The project was financed on the frame of:
FONDO ITALIANO PER LE SCIENZE APPLICATE (FISA)

Project amount 1.016.499,73 €