Innovations under this Call, are in some cases complementary unit processes to existing process flow sheets, while in others, such as European lithium or precursor production, completely new flowsheets. These advancements are expected to bring the European battery metal and chemical production to a global leadership. The activities are expected to cover one or several bullets:

• Solutions to a sustainable Lithium value chain.
• New refining processes to increase value and yield from European mines and sustainably sourced and imported (nickel and cobalt) raw materials, but also from process waste, side streams, recycled materials, mine tailings and other non-conventional sources.
• Improvements in performance and efficiency of existing (nickel and cobalt) refining processes in Europe, e.g. by implementing new methodologies to reduce carbon emissions, increasing energy and resource efficiency, raw material flexibility and substitution of fossil fuels.
• Development of continuous processes for precursor materials (pCAM) to replace the currently used batch processing.
• Zero Liquid Discharge processing in battery chemical and precursor material processing, including energy cascading and waste valorisation.
• New business models for co-processing and process integration.
• Process modelling competence combined with environmental impact evaluation (incl. LCA) for individual primary processes, in collaboration with a project funded under HORIZON-CL5-2021-D5-01-04.