14/09/23
The EU-project SALAMANDER has been granted close to 5 M€ from the European Commission in partnership with the Battery 2030+ initiative and Batt4EU to enhance battery quality, reliability, lifetime, and safety. This is the first Horizon Europe project on batteries to be led and coordinated by IFE.
Project title: Smart sensors and self-healing functionalities embedded for battery longevity with manufacturability and economical recyclability (SALAMANDER). Project period: 2023 – 2026.
The joint venture with partners from seven European countries met for a project kickoff near Oslo on May 15th, 2023.The SALAMANDER project intends to develop a Li-ion battery, similar to what is widely used today, which integrates “smart” functionalities. The smart functionalities include internal sensors to monitor battery health, and when the battery reaches a certain level of wear, it can activate a healing process to recover the capacity, restoring to new or near-new condition. Besides integrating both sensors and self-healing components into battery cells, the SALAMANDER project will also evaluate the impact of these components on both manufacturability and recycling. By improving battery quality and lifetime, SALAMANDER can help enable the transition to decarbonized and clean energy systems both in grid storage and electrified transport. The project is supported by the Battery 2030+ initiative, a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.
SALAMANDER focuses on research and innovation on materials, interfaces, cell design, manufacturing, and simulation, addressing the main challenges related to the integration and interactions between the normal battery components and the new sensor and self-healing components. The expertise and competence ranges from computational simulations of silicon and self-healing polymer interfaces to pilot-scale production of battery pouch cells to recycling and life cycle analysis. The research outcomes produced by SALAMANDER will benefit the scientific community, students and postdocs, industry, policymakers, and society with a special focus on commercialization of the research results through a partnership with IFE Invest.
In addition, the SALAMANDER project will work closely with its cohorts under the Battery 2030+ umbrella. One key aspect of this collaboration is to leverage the results and learnings of prior self-healing battery projects HIDDEN and BAT4EVER and the battery sensor projects SPARTACUS, SENSIBAT, and INSTABAT. The Battery 2030+ approach represents a generational shift in how the battery research community develops its work into disruptive technologies and competitive edges for the broader European battery value chain.
“Our next steps in the road ahead is to work out the many finer details and finish hiring the team, but the gathering has been highly motivating for everyone. It is challenging to build a mutual understanding of everyone’s expertise, so having good communication tools and establishing common standards early in the project are key steps to collaborating effectively.” – Samson Y. Lai, SALAMANDER coordinator
SALAMANDER addresses especially, but not exclusively, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): 3 – Good health and well-being, 7 – Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all, 8 – Green growth and sustainable jobs, 9 – Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation, 11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, 12 – Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns, and 13 – Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
The project is coordinated by the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in Kjeller, Norway.
For more information, please contact: Dr. Samson Y. Lai, samson.lai@ife.no or Carlos Escudero, carlos.escudero@ife.no.
The SALAMANDER concept and operation cycle using sensors and self-healing. Source: Carlos Escudero, Samson Y. Lai.
The SALAMANDER partners come from seven European countries. Source: IFE, Sigmund Kielland.