Batteries have been identified as an important technology to guide the clean-energy transition. Its presence in the automotive and energy storage industry is well-established and forecasts show its incoming market uptake. However, the current BMS of FLBs lack interoperability features, resulting in a time-consuming, expensive, and non-standardized reconfiguration process for SLB adaptation. These drawbacks complicate FLB repurposing for SLB applications, like ESS. The BIG LEAP project focuses on developing solutions for the SLBs BMS and its reconfiguration process. Technology breakthroughs will be made in its BMS, as a new three-layer architecture will be designed to ensure interoperability, safety, and reliability. It will be complemented with an adaptable ESS design to ensure BMS integration and expand the SLB's potential applications. Additionally, the BIG LEAP project intends to optimize the battery reconfiguration process by making it cost-effective, faster, and standardized. The methodology for the development of these innovations includes the collection of EV, maritime E-Vessel, and ESS batteries that will be dismantled and the data collected will serve as the basis for the BMS architecture development. It will contain adaptable SoX algorithms for accurate battery measurement, a DT for real-time monitoring, and a standardization roadmap. The new BMS will be integrated into the batteries, alongside the ESS and will be tested in three demo sites. Two physical demos will be in Paris and Prague, and a virtual demo will be in Morocco. They aim to validate the novel BMS and ESS, proving their optimization and interoperability. The BIG LEAP innovation includes a multidisciplinary consortium, a strong business case, and an Environmental Impact assessment. All with the intention of accelerating its market uptake with a cost-effective solution, positively impacting the European economy through the battery value chain and tracing its sustainable benefits.

UPCYCLE aims to demonstrate novel circular value chains that transform currently non-recyclable mixed plastic waste into biodegradable and recyclable materials for packaging applications. Building on the promising results of the H2020 UPLIFT project, UPCYCLE addresses specific scalability hotspots to reach economic viability. The project scales up its novel plastic biorefinery and ecopolymers with a strategy that leverages: (1) A Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design framework to ensure safety (i.e., non-toxic materials), a reduction in GHG emissions (-30%), and economic viability (<40% selling price); (2) AI-powered fast-track innovation for process intensification; (3) A versatile biorefinery process to valorise mixed plastic waste (both fossil- and bio-based) and secondary biomass residues; (4) A smart polymerisation and formulation strategy using bio-based, degradable additives to tune biodegradability and enhance technical performance for four selected packaging use cases. Leveraging a multidisciplinary consortium of top-tier academic institutions and industry leaders, UPCYCLE is poised to create significant impact in the packaging industry. UPCYCLE’s ecopolymers, derived from plastic and biomass waste streams, promote a viable circular business model for European recyclers, polymer processors, compounders, and packaging producers. Moreover, our strategy demonstrates how renewable and upcycled building blocks and additives can be blended into commercially available polymers to delivers novel PHA-, PLA- and Furan-based packaging formulations, to successfully modulate degradability and technical performance, based on the application. By providing the tools to improve properties and economic viability of polymers systems that are already in the market, we provide a fast-track pathway towards impact.

HAVEN features a systematic, collaborative, and integrated approach to the design and demonstration of a cutting-edge, sustainable, and safe HESS capable of long duration storage and provision of multiple services for supporting the electrical grid and EV charging infrastructure by coupling complementary technology assets, namely, next-generation high-energy (HE) and high-power (HP) storage technologies, optimised power converter devices with innovative cognitive functionalities, advanced and cyber-secured energy management and control tools and strategies in a novel system architecture. HAVEN seeks to achieve a modular, scalable and cost-efficient solution with the capability to efficiently manage power and energy shares while optimising the system in terms of sizing, CAPEX/OPEX, aging stress and store degradation depending on the specific application. In addition, the project will go a step further by developing a flexible Digital Twin (DT) of the system, valid regardless of the cell chemistry and application and adaptable for second life battery modules, that enables to predict the performance and management of the system over its lifetime, while easing its design and predictive maintenance. All this, leveraged by the first-hand experience of leading academic and industrial players (7 companies). HAVEN’s smart solution will be validated and demonstrated up to TRL 7 in 3 physical and 2 virtual Use-Cases (UCs), covering a wide range of grid support services and considering the specificities of multiple electricity and balancing markets, both in Europe and beyond. To pave the path towards a fast market uptake after the project, the work will also include the development of business models and industrial exploitation strategies, cementing HAVEN’s position as a game-changer in the field of energy storage systems.