partners

6

Countries

VARTA Microbattery (VMB) is an internationally leading and globally active manufacturer of retail and OEM batteries and has been operating for more than 125 years. VMB employs nearly 750 persons in Germany and approx. 2,000 worldwide. The company headquarter is located in Ellwangen in the southern part of Germany where the entire research, engineering and production of the electrochemical cells are done. 150 VARTA employees work in the Innovation Tower at our headquarters in Ellwangen. This central Research and Development department focuses on developing new products and optimizing existing solutions. Particular attention is paid to material and structural research, converting and storing energy (light, heat, vibration, etc.), and nanotechnologies, fuel cells, and printed batteries.

CEA is a French government-funded technological research organization. With more than 15,000 researchers and co-workers, its activities cover four main areas: Energy, Defence & security, Health & information technologies, and Fundamental research. Two institutes from CEA, both located on the CEA Grenoble centre, are involved in the ECO²LIB project.

CEA-IRIG is a fundamental research institute with ~ 400 people involved in nanoscience, while CEA-LITEN is a technological research institute (1,000 people) specialized on energy R&D (fuel cell, batteries, biomass, and solar application).

CEA-IRIG and CEA-LITEN have developed expertise in advanced characterization on the Nanocharacterization platform, a large facility devoted to up-to-date electron microscopy, surface spectroscopy (XPS, Auger, ToF-SIMS) and NMR on the Minatec campus of Grenoble. INAC also manages X-rays beam line at the world-leading European Large Scale Facilities, e.g. the synchrotron (ESRF) and the neutron source (ILL). In the past years, CEA-INAC and CEA-LITEN have developed strong knowledge in Li-ion (and post-Li ion) batteries post-mortem and operando investigation, in particular for Si-based electrodes. The Nanocharacterisation facility not only provides access to high tech equipment with experienced staff, but also develops new characterisation methods to add to its portfolio. Recent developments include the availability of a suite of CEA-made battery cells and module transfers adapted to in situ scattering, in situ spectroscopy, and advanced microscopy. Real-time observation of electrochemical energy storage and conversion devices was achieved by, e.g., beyond state-of-the art techniques as scattering tomography, ToF-SIMS tomography or FIB-TEM coupled to HRTEM-EELS.

WMG is a world leading research and education group, transforming organisations and driving innovation through a unique combination of collaborative research and development, and pioneering education programmes.

As an international role model for successful partnerships between academia and the private and public sectors, WMG develops advancements nationally and globally, in applied science, technology and engineering, to deliver real impact to economic growth, society and the environment.

WMG’s education programmes focus on lifelong learning of the brightest talent, from the WMG Academies for Young Engineers, degree apprenticeships, undergraduate and postgraduate, through to professional programmes.

An academic department of the University of Warwick, and a centre for the HVM Catapult, WMG was founded by the late Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya in 1980 to help reinvigorate UK manufacturing and improve competitiveness through innovation and skills development.

VARTA Innovation GmbH (VI), with registered office in Graz (AUT), was founded in 2009 as a joint venture between VARTA Microbattery and Graz University of Technology (AUT). Within VARTA Innovation both, the industrial fabrication know-how from VARTA Microbattery and the basic research know-how from Graz University of Technology for various electrochemical energy storage systems are merged together.

Today, VARTA Innovation is fully integrated as R&D centre within the VARTA Group with the main business purpose of development and validation of new material as well as process technologies and their transfer to the stage of industrial application. This work includes on the one hand the qualification of new material and process technologies, conceptualizing of implementation strategies and finally the demonstration within proof of concept prototypes. In addition, VARTA Innovation is also highly experienced in advanced analysis and electrochemical characterisation of Li-Ion Batteries for different application fields (e.g. automotive, storage of renewable energies, consumer electronics, etc.).

EurA AG has been established in Ellwangen (Baden-Württemberg, Germany) in 1999. The company currently employs more than 140 persons on 9 locations in Germany, Portugal and Belgium.

As an innovation service provider, EurA advises more than 1,500 mainly medium-sized companies in Germany, covering all industrial sectors. From the beginning, one emphasis lay on the energy sector as one of the most innovative, challenging, and interesting sectors.

EurA accompanies its customers along every stage of the innovation process, providing services ideally tailored to the individual needs of the respective partner. The portfolio ranges from the development of a general company or innovation strategy based on a thorough business plan, over the determination of the financial aspects, the initiation and mediation of promising partnerships, the implementation of innovative products, technologies and services, up to the development of appropriate commercialisation strategies and the market introduction of those innovations.

In addition, EurA has built up dedicated expertise in the sustainability assessment of products, processes and services.

Uppsala University, founded in 1477, is the oldest University in the Nordic countries, and generally ranked among the top 100 universities in the world. Today, it trains more than 43,000 students, and employs 6,000 people. There are about 2,500 active graduate students; 44% of these are women. Each year, the University awards some 270 doctoral degrees.

The Ångström Advanced Battery Centre (ÅABC) is an integral part of the Department of Chemistry – Ångström Laboratory, Uppsala University (UU); it is housed within the Ångström Laboratory – one of Europe’s best equipped Materials Research Laboratories. The Centre involves the full-time activities of >70 researchers, of whom 8 are Senior Staff; the remainders are PhD students, postdocs, researchers and assistant professors. The group produce ca. 5 PhD theses annually. It is the leading research environments for the development of electrochemical storage materials and advanced battery technology in the Nordic countries. It is a member of the Swedish Electromobility Centre. The focus of research is on modern commercial and next-generation Li-ion batteries, and future battery chemistries such as Na-ion, Li-S, organic electrodes, solid-state, etc. The expertise lies in synthesis of electrode and electrolyte materials and electrochemical testing, but equally important are the development of in operando structural characterization techniques and surface science techniques. The Centre also has vivid activities on multi-scale modelling of batteries and battery materials, spanning from materials modelling to electrochemical simulations.

The Materials Center Leoben Forschung GmbH (MCL) is the leading Austrian institution in the field of applied materials science with around 150 employees. In particular, it is operating the Comet K2 Center on Integrated Research in Materials, Processing and Product Engineering (MPPE) which is the largest competence center in the field of research on application of materials in Austria. The research focuses on Integrated research in materials, processing and product engineering and covers the entire supply chain from material synthesis via materials processing and manufacturing and is also including the behavior of components in service till their deployment. About 50 scientific institutions and about 90 companies are collaborating in this network on material based innovations in the fields of (a) new materials and novel material solutions for future applications like energy storage and harvesting, (b) new and optimized processes and process chains, (c) new design concepts, (d) innovative material driven products, and (d) reliability of products in service.

The MCL has modern lab equipment suitable for cutting edge failure characterization and material characterization.

VARTA Storage GmbH (VS) is a developer and manufacturer of stationary battery storage systems based in Nördlingen, Germany. The company has substantial know-how in the field of energy storage by using long-life lithium-ion batteries and conducts in this context innovative research and development activities. Currently VARTA Storage offers several small-scale battery storage systems for residential use allowing users to consume their own environmentally friendly electricity whenever they need it. As a consequence, the consumption of the self-generated energy can be increased to 70 percent or higher and make the users less dependent on electricity prices.

Besides small-scale storage systems VARTA Storage promotes the development of modular large-sized storage systems. The applied modular concept and applied safety concepts make these systems flexible, efficient and safe. Its wide field of application (efficient integration of renewable energies, the support of grid stability, off-grid applications) and the possibility to serve multiple business models at the same time enables high economic use.

University of Warsaw (UW) was founded in 1816. The University brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines. It is the place of a diversity of scientific research. Nearly 60,000 people study at the University of Warsaw every year. The candidates are offered a very broad range of courses in the fields of humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, as well as many interdisciplinary courses combining knowledge and skills of many disciplines. The University offers undergraduate and doctoral studies, organizes summer schools, postgraduate studies and vocational courses, initiates interdisciplinary programmes and introduces new teaching techniques.

The Faculty of Chemistry, University of Warsaw, is a large research and teaching centre. There are fully developed programs in analytical chemistry, biochemistry, inorganic, nuclear, organic, and physical chemistry as well as in chemical physics. The faculty has been regarded as one of the top chemistry departments in the country for decades, and it attracts outstanding faculty and students. Many faculty members have distinguished themselves both nationally and internationally.

Accurec is a German SME company, founded in 1995 with its primary target to constitute the consumer battery recycling market in Germany. Using first time vacuum thermal treatment technology for recycling, Accurec has implemented a zero-emission plant for hazardous batteries (Nickel-Cadmium batteries) successfully. After upscaling and expansion, also for other battery types (Li-Ion, NiMH), Accurec is today a continuously growing, branch leading company. Thus, Accurec has been awarded several times for its innovative resource efficiency technology (Kaiserpfalz 2008, German Resource Agency 2012, Ecopol 2013). Necessary continuous improvements of process technology, as well as ongoing changing chemistries in batteries forces Accurec to spend 10% of its turnover for R&D activities. Thus, several R&D projects were initiated in cooperation with international partners and universities to improve internal know- how and test newly developed recycling process. In 2015, Accurec has inaugurated it´s new Li-Ion specialised recycling center in Krefeld/DE. With a recycling capacity of about 2.000 tons of Li-containing batteries, it is one of the largest and most innovative recycling facilities in EU.