Press Releases

The Green Batteries Conference 2021 assembles experts from all parts of the battery value chain and achieve a common understanding of the different aspects of sustainable batteries – from raw materials and storage sites to battery concepts, design for recycling, sustainable manufacturing and use, recycling technologies and closing the loop. The conference will be held online on Tuesday afternoons in October 2021, and the response is already very promising.

Bavaria's Secretary of the Interior Gerhard Eck will hand over the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research Würzburg, Prof. Dr. Gerhard Sextl, on Thursday, July 29, 2021 in the Fürstensaal of the Würzburg Residence.

Lithium-ion batteries require in addition to lithium metal a number of sophisticated functional materials for their performance. Some of them sound rather unspectacular: conductive additives. In fact, conductive additives like carbon black or carbon nanotubes are a decisive component for the performance and environmental benignity of lithium-ion batteries. The recently launched collaborative project HiQ-CARB aims to provide new carbons with a superior performance and a low carbon footprint for future green batteries in Europe. HiQ-CARB is receiving EU funding from EIT RawMaterials to scale up and validate this important battery material.

The SUPERSMART research project funded by EIT RawMaterials has shown proof: printed electronic components such as sensors and smart labels on paper can play an essential role in building a smart environment for production, retail and logistics. Efficient and reliable production processes make them economically competitive. In terms of resource conservation, climate and the environment, electronics printed on paper have outstanding advantages over conventional substrates and manufacturing processes for smart electronic components. The SUPERSMART project team is proud to have been selected by the international jury as the winner of the 2021 OE-A competition within the category "Best Publicly Funded Project Demonstrator". The award ceremony will take place on April 15, 2021.

Germany holds the EU Council Presidency until the end of December. In an ambitious program, Germany has set itself the goal of addressing the issues of climate change and the protection of cultural heritage, among others. However, there is still a lack of reliable data and scientific studies on how and, above all, which future extreme weather events will affect our cultural heritage in the various regions of Germany and what measures we can take to protect our cultural heritage. Over the next three years, researchers will investigate this for the first time for Germany in the BMBF-funded project "KERES". The research project is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg together with the Fraunhofer EU Office in Brussels.

Faster charging, longer stability of performance not only for electric vehicles but also for smartphones and other battery powered products. What still sounds like science fiction today might be feasible in the future, not least thanks to innovations the recently started “Spartacus” research project wants to achieve. By utilizing advanced sensors and cell management systems, “Spartacus” aims to reduce charging times by up to 20 % without compromising the reliability and service life of batteries. The European Union is funding “Spartacus” as part of the Battery 2030+ research initiative.

The ImAi project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is intended to create an animal-free replacement for the Draize test on rabbits used worldwide to assess the eye irritancy potential of chemicals. The new test is based on tissue models of the cornea cultivated in the laboratory. At the end of the project, a new standard procedure should be available for use worldwide.

Batteries will play a crucial role in the phase-out of fossil fuels, in particular in the transport sector. If the goal of reducing CO2 emissions in Germany by 55 percent by 2030 is to be achieved, future batteries must above all become more sustainable and also cheaper. That is a big challenge, because the development of new batteries takes a long time - longer than we can wait for the green transition. The EU project BIG-MAP (Battery Interface Genome - Materials Acceleration Platform), aims at accelerating the speed of battery development by changing the way of inventing, so that future sustainable and ultra-high-performance batteries can be developed 10 times faster than today.

Dr. Sabine-Amberg Schwab from the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg was presented with the Sustainability Award 2020 by Packaging Europe on 15 October. She received the award for the development of bioORMOCER®s, a sustainable material concept for plastic packaging. The jury particularly emphasised that bioORMOCER®s not only improve the properties of bioplastics and paper, but also make plastic packaging in general recyclable.

The European research initiative BATTERY 2030+ is now getting going. The ambition is to make Europe the world-leader in the development and production of the batteries of the future. These batteries need to store more energy, have a longer life, and be safer and more environmentally friendly than today’s batteries in order to facilitate the transition to a more climate-neutral society. The project is led from Uppsala University.