The Partners Showcased Significant Progress Towards Sustainable Battery Materials Production
On 2 June 2026, partners of the Horizon Europe project CICERO gathered in Helsinki, Finland, for the sixth consortium meeting. Hosted by VTT. The meeting brought together representatives from across the consortium to review technical achievements, discuss upcoming activities, and align efforts towards the project's objective of developing methanesulfonic acid (MSA)-based circular hydrometallurgical processes for the sustainable and cost-effective production of NMC cathode materials.
Throughout the meeting, partners presented encouraging results across all work packages, highlighting major advances in metal recovery, reagent regeneration, battery precursor production, process modelling, sustainability assessment, and dissemination activities.
Strong technical progress across the value chain was reported with advanced research on advanced leaching and solution purification, as well as conversion of recovered metals into battery-grade precursors. Important milestones were also reported on reagent regeneration and iron recovery.
Modelling supports process optimisation via new thermodynamic models to support solvent extraction, enabling more accurate prediction of system behaviour and future process optimisation
The consortium also reviewed progress in advancing sustainability and circularity assessments. Health and safety are also being evaluated. In parallel, techno-economic modelling is also being established.
The meeting was also marlet with the second Exploitation Workship, during which the industrial partners discussed the scalability of the research.
The meeting demonstrated once again the strength of the CICERO consortium and its commitment to developing innovative, circular, and sustainable solutions for securing Europe's future battery raw materials supply chain.
