Project duration: 1 April 2016 – 31 December 2018

Objective

The energy and mobility industry strongly depends on lithium-ion batteries as mobile energy storage devices for electric vehicles, electric bikes, or as stationary storage systems for solar cells or wind turbines. These batteries contain many precious and critical raw materials, e. g. cobalt and fossil resource-based graphite. So the large and still increasing markets energy supply and mobility run into resource scarcity. This resource scarcity will become even more relevant in future if we do not find efficient and sustainable substitutes for those materials.
In effect there is a requirement to find solutions for new battery materials with reduced amounts of critical raw materials and with higher energy and power density, higher output voltage and longer cycle life as well as production processes that are green, sustainable, and economic.
Thus, the objective of the project ECO COM’BAT is the combination of the latest developments of green and high-performance materials to produce the next generation of lithium-ion batteries, the so called high-voltage batteries.

The solution (technology)

For this purpose, the materials have to be up-scaled to pilot and later industrial scale. By involving actors along the whole value chain and from each part of the knowledge triangle (including task partners CCI as SME and SAFT as end user for batteries) the newly developed battery materials will be produced and processed to electrodes and battery cells. Their performance will be modelled and finally tested with specifications of SAFT.

Partnership

  • Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. (Fraunhofer), Germany (Lead Partner)
  • Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), Spain
  • Agenzia Nazionale per le Nuove Tecnologie, l’Energia e lo Sviluppo Economico Sostenibile (ENEA), Italy
  • Arkema France, France
  • Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, CEA (French Alternative  Energies and Atomic Energy Commission), France
  • Custom Cells Itzehoe GmbH (CCI), Germany
  • SAFT Incubator, France
  • Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
  • UMICORE NV, Belgium
  • Vlaamse Instelling voor Technologisch Onderzoek NV – (Flemish Institute for Technological Research NV VITO), Belgium

For more information, please visit the project website.