CICERO held its 3rd consortium meeting on 9-10 December in Leuven, Belgium. The meeting was hosted by the coordinator KU Leuven, with PI, head of the coordination team, Prof. Koen Binnemans.
The project, funded by the EU and monitored by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency, contributes to the implementation of the European Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), which entered into force in June this year. By targeting the domestic refining of three “strategic” battery related critical raw materials (Ni, Co and Mn) the CICERO project addresses the second CRMA benchmark: > 40% domestic processing/refining.
It has been one year since the eleven full- and two associate- project partners have been collaborating on the project activities, organized under five technical work packages. All tasks and partner efforts have been meticulously following the project Work Plan, towards the development of a suite of novel metallurgical unit processes for advanced MSA leaching and solution purification, the conversion to battery-grade MSA salts, and the synthesis of NMC cathodes in MSA media, with sound reagent regeneration & iron recovery, in line with the Twelve Principles of Circular Hydrometallurgy.
The two day consortium meeting gave the opportunity to team members from all eight work packages to hold discussions, related to a specific technical task, or discuss the approach towards the overall objective of the project and its different implementation stages. Synergies between different work packages were established and the partners had a productive exchange on the work, that needs to take place in the first half of 2025.
The project coordinator noted the smooth progress of the activities, provided an overall overview of the projects development and clarified administrative and financial aspects. The project Executive Committee meeting took place at the end of the second day. Strategic matters were discussed and the partners held an exchange on the overall implementation of the Critical Raw Materials Acts and its importance to the European industry and economy.
