Specific raw materials become increasingly important to manufacture high level industrial products. Especially electronic equipment contains precious metals and a series of strategic raw materials. To date the material specific recycling is focused on mass stream concepts such as shredder processes and metallurgy to extract the high-value metallic constituents, i.e. copper, gold, silver. However, a series of critical elements cannot be recovered efficiently or is even lost in dust or residual fractions. The goal of ADIR is to demonstrate the feasibility of a key technology for next generation urban mining. An automated disassembly of electronic equipment will be worked out to separate and recover valuable materials. The concept is based on image processing, robotic handling, pulsed power technology, 3D laser measurement, real-time laser material identification (to detect materials), laser processing (to access components, to selectively unsolder these; to cut off parts of a printed circuit board), and automatic separation into different sorting fractions. A machine concept will be worked out being capable to selectively disassemble printed circuit boards and mobile phones with short cycle times to gain sorting fractions containing high amounts of valuable materials. Examples are those materials with high economic importance and significant supply risk such as tantalum, rare earth elements, germanium, cobalt, palladium, gallium and tungsten. A demonstrator will be developed and evaluated in field tests at a recycling company. The obtained sorting fractions will be studied with respect to their further processing and recovery potential for raw materials. Refining companies will define requirements and test the processing of sorting fractions with specific material enrichments. An advisory board will be established incorporating three telecommunication enterprises.

iModBatt stands for Industrial Modular Battery Pack Concept Addressing High Energy Density, Environmental Friendliness, Flexibility and Cost Efficiency for Automotive Applications. The aim of iModBatt is to design and manufacture, with minimum environmental impact, a high energy density modular battery pack flexible enough to be used in automotive and small stationary applications. This battery pack will be suitable for industrial automated assembly with an easy disassembly design, to make possible the shift from primary applications to secondary ones, and to facilitate the pack recyclability or parts replacement if necessary. The project concept is built around an already existing technologically breakthrough, modular battery pack design primarily developed for specialty applications, that has proven excellent performance and cost efficiency in such a manner that higher ambition, wider spread electric vehicle applications seem the natural next developmental step for such a concept. The project focuses into maximization of the energy density of a lithium ion pack through the optimization of the structural design and components of a battery pack for a given cell form factor. In this sense the strategy is to increase the energy density by reducing the weight of the battery pack while keeping structural integrity and easy assembly and manufacturing. Chemistry and BMS work is beyond the scope of the project, which focuses in the structural design and manufacturing. The Consortium includes industrial partners of every step of the battery pack value chain, including automotive OEMs, battery parts manufacturers as well as leading European research centres with ample experience in the field of batteries.

sustainablySMART will make a change to the life cycle of mobile information and communication devices by developing new product design approaches (including enhanced end-of-life performance, re-use and re-manufacturing aspects; i.e. implementing “Design for a Circular Economy”) for smartphones and tablet computers on the product and printed circuit board level, and by new re-/de-manufacturing processes with improved resource efficiency through (1) enhanced sorting capabilities and speed (optimized sorting efficiency), (2) automated disassembly of mobile IT devices for extraction of reusable components / modules, better material separation and depollution of end-of-life devices (increase value creation out of discarded devices significantly to create an economic advantage over shredding processes), and (3) high-quality performance testing (batteries) and rework (semiconductors and modules) of reusable components/modules (creating a market push for reusable parts through enhanced availability for repair and cascade reuse)