Objectives

METALLICO will develop and optimize five innovative processes to recover the valuable materials needed in the battery industry and in other strategic sectors: Lithium, cobalt, copper, manganese and nickel. For this, not only primary resources will be extracted and processed. Also secondary resources (liquid and solid waste streams that contain metal concentrations) will be valorised.

METALLICO is committed to a sustainable and zero-waste approach. This includes the five innovative processes, a better recovery of resources from generated waste and the reduction of waste during the production of (critical) battery metals. The processes will be evaluated in terms of their sustainability.

METALLICO will demonstrate in four different case studies that the (critical) metals lithium, cobalt, copper, mangan and nickel can be sustainably produced and recovered by upscaling the five METALLICO processes in different industrial sites, from lab scale to an industrially relevant environment.

The final products, obtained and recovered in the case studies, will be assessed and validated in the battery, cement, painting and ceramic industry. In doing so, we demonstrate that the final products will suit the needs of the markets and can be fed back into the value chain. Thus, METALLICO contributes to a circular economy.

In METALLICO, a digital (open source) platform is being developed in which, on the one hand, primary and secondary battery metal sources will be identified and characterized. On the other hand, digital twins of innovative plants for the recovery and production of metal will make it possible to simulate the efficiency as well as the economic, environmental and social impacts of the respective metal.