General conditions

1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

2. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.

3. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

If projects use satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation and/or related timing data and services, beneficiaries must make use of Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data and services may additionally be used).

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes

5. Evaluation and award:

• Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes

• Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual

• Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes

6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes

Specific conditions

7. Specific conditions: described in the [specific topic of the Work Programme]

Documents

Call documents:

Standard application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System

Standard application form (HE RIA, IA)

Standard evaluation form — will be used with the necessary adaptations

Standard evaluation form (HE RIA, IA)

MGA

HE General MGA v1.0

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 1. General Introduction

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 8. Climate, Energy and Mobility

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 13. General Annexes

HE Programme Guide

HE Framework Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695

HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764

EU Financial Regulation

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

The pre-treatment process is the first and indispensable step in recycling Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), which significantly affects the recycling rate of the spent devices and the extraction rate of the high-value metals in the subsequent metallurgical processes. The batteries also contain toxic chemicals, which should be preventatively separated to promote environmental protection and sustainability. Moreover, the pre-treatment processes also help to reduce the scrap volume and allow the separation of the battery components.

Projects are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

1. A European economic base which is stronger, more resilient, competitive and fit for the green and digital transitions, by reducing strategic dependencies for critical raw materials by promoting a circular economy.
2. The direction of the EU battery industry towards the zero-waste concept by developing holistic, materials and energy efficient recycling processes that can increase the content of recovered mass and by improving the cooperation between recyclers and battery manufacturing through a vertical integration strategy, for those cases where battery and/or component repurposing is not a viable option.
3. The circularity of battery materials, where also non-metallic elements (electrolyte, solvent, salts and polymers) are recycled back to use (as raw materials or valuable chemicals). The “cradle to cradle approach” will be addressed though waste pre-treatment by safe and sustainable separation and recovery.
4. Environmentally beneficial processes for battery pre-treatment (pre-processing and separation) of the main elements to decrease the CO2 footprint and other emissions of the recycled materials.
5. Safe technologies aimed at improved recovery yield, increased quality and purity level of the recycled/recovered materials, improved impurity removal.

The current EOL LIB recycling technologies are focused on improving the recovering efficiency of Cobalt that is the most valuable material. However, other no-Co battery contents need to be extracted in one go to develop recycling processes with economic, societal and environmental perspectives. They, for instance, include low-density plastics, metal shells and foils, binders, separators, organic solvents, Li salt, anode active materials. Successful separation methods have the potential to enrich the constituent of targeted materials and improve the profit for recycling.

In recent years, several pre-treatment processes were tested at least at lab-scale (usually mechanical, thermal and chemical options). The goal is to develop and integrate new advanced pre-processing concepts that enable more efficient and safe technologies for recycling EoL LIBs. Substantial improvements should be achieved in the processes environmental and economic viability and in the circular economy, narrowing the sustainability gaps in the whole battery recyclates pre-treatment.

The following pre-treatment concepts are expected to be addressed:

1. Battery sorting at component level that should be more efficient, accurate, also including recommendations for the standardisation of labelling of battery components, due to the huge variation of physical configurations, cell types and chemistries, with the aim of re-using the suitable components.
2. Advanced pre-processing methods including (but not limited to) physical, mechanical, dry, thermal and aqueous pre-treatment methods that allow improved pre-concentration while minimising as much as possible waste side products.
3. Process design enabling the recovery and valorisation of anode materials.
4. Electrolyte valorisation through the development of sustainable and safe processes for the recovery of Li-salts.
5. Separation of all the strategic battery materials that should be integrated into existing/innovative recycling processes to mitigate potential effect of impurities.
6. Recovery of electrode current collectors (Al and Cu) that should be improved by developing more efficient separation methods of the metal foils from the electrode materials and easier removal of the organic binder.
7. Other recoverable not-active materials from the EoL battery (solvent as EC, DEC, DMC, binders, separator).
8. Pre-assessing concepts by their life cycle sustainability and safety impacts and studying overall techno-economical solutions for recovery systems in order to minimize cost, environmental impact and system losses.

Plans for the exploitation and dissemination of results for proposals submitted under this topic should include a strong business case and sound exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination. The exploitation plans should include preliminary plans for scalability, commercialisation, and deployment (feasibility study, business plan).

Pre-treatment should not impede on second life, according to the principles of the waste hierarchy.

The topic will generate insights that may be of use for on-going research and innovation on new recycling processes and concepts from topic HORIZON-CL5-2023-D2-01-02.

Projects may collaborate and/or contribute to the activities of the Coordination and Support Action defined under the topic HORIZON-CL5-2022-D2-01-08.

Proposals could consider the involvement of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) whose contribution could consists of providing added value regarding various aspects of battery sustainability.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on Batteries (Batt4EU). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on the results to the European Partnership on Batteries (Batt4EU) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 5 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.