In STREAMS, a comprehensive portfolio of at least 12 scalable and flexible technologies and pilot scale solutions for the sustainable production of battery-grade precursors and their respective anode and cathode active materials will be developed, evaluated and successfully demonstrated. These technological processes will be applied to materials from primary and secondary sources including recycled battery mass and photovoltaic waste. This will strengthen Europe’s domestic battery materials supply chain and reduce Europe’s dependency on imported critical and strategic raw materials supplies. The production technologies will also increase Europe’s resilience, competitiveness and strategic autonomy in the global battery manufacturing industry. STREAMS’ technological solutions will meet EU requirements for environmentally responsible design, and scale up, and anticipate regulatory compliance by conducting techno-economic, environmental, social impact and integrated risks assessments combined with life cycle sustainability and circularity assessments. The cathode and anode active materials synthesized in STREAMS will be used to manufacture 10 Ah battery cells at pilot scale using sustainable electrode processing. Prototype cells will be tested according to established standards and subjected to advanced post-mortem characterization. STREAM will also identify optimal conditions for future exploitation of the project results.

Too often, great research ideas as well as talented researchers from Europe are acquired by non-European players who turn them into impactful innovations whose economic benefits are realized outside the EU. In addition, the innovation divide between the widening countries and the other member states persists (patent applications per million inhabitants not reaching 15% of the EU benchmark). The problem of the inability to transform the potential of basic research into the development of commercially viable innovations thus becomes a serious obstacle for the sustainable economic development of countries such as the Czechia, Poland, and Slovakia. In response, the CLiCAM project will cultivate participating ERA talents into leaders who will make innovation happen through intersectoral collaboration. The innovation leadership provided by ERA talents shall transform participating research organisations from widening countries into innovation beacons turning basic research into sustainable prosperity in fields of coatings and additive manufacturing. In doing so, the project will create an R&I ecosystem contributing to the development of relevant key enabling technologies across three domains critical for Europe’s technological sovereignty: advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, and life-science technologies. The actions of the consortium will concern three pillars of innovation: (i) people – cross-sector secondments and Innovation Leadership training, ii) processes – reintegration actions and benchmarking initiative, iii) infrastructure – two virtual test bed ecosystems for better use of existing research facilities. The long-term impact will be to strengthen human capital base in R&I (qualified personnel for impactful innovation), initiate technology transfer activities (patent applications, licensing transactions, contractual research) and generate future R&D investments (intersectoral research projects, virtual test bed ecosystems, spin-offs).

The successful implementation of CO2 capture and valorization technologies is a key step within the European Green Deal, and requires the joint development of innovative processes and materials (possibly non-CRMs) to comply with the EU decarbonization timeline (55% less net greenhouse gas emissions by 2030). Nowadays, this goal can only be achieved by a collaborative effort of researchers belonging to different disciplines and bringing together different expertise. Aim of the C-NET proposal is to build a network of experts working in complementary scientific areas in order to promote advancements in the wide “net zero carbon” field. C-NET is conceived as a nurturing environment where researchers can take advantage of facilities and know-how of the partner units, involving both thermochemical and electrochemical CO2 conversion processes. The synergistic collaboration will triangulate people, materials and knowledge between UniUD (green, solvent-free mechanochemical synthesis of non-CRM catalysts and electrocatalysts), Surrey (combined capture and catalytic conversion processes), Sevilla (structured catalytic reactors development for process intensification), Treibacher (materials design, development and scale-up) and China (electro-conversion of CO2). The joint research efforts will be supported and fostered by process modeling (VirtualMech) and advanced material characterization carried out by operando synchrotron light-based techniques (NTNU-ESRF) and in-situ DRIFT experiments (Sabana, Bogota, COL). C-NET, exploiting the planned secondments and the organization of workshops and conferences to promote knowledge-sharing and new skills acquisition, will provide an exhaustive toolkit aimed at overcoming the current state-of-the-art in the field of CO2 valorization processes.