Dr. Pertti Kauranen has a Doctor of Technology degree in engineering physics and electrochemistry from Helsinki University of Technology, completed in 1996. He has been working on development of materials, components, devices and applications for electrochemical energy conversion and storage ever since. The devices comprise polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) and direct methanol fuels,PEM electrolyzes as well as Li-ion, redox flow and metal-air batteries. The industrial employers include a Finnish battery start up and a major German chemical supplier, the academic ones VTT Technical Research Centre of Finlandand Aalto University. He is currently, among others, coordinating the European cooperation under the Finnish BATCircle project.
Finland launched a major battery raw materials and recycling project titled «Finland-based Circular Ecosystem of Battery Metals – BATCircle» in 2019. The project is coordinated by Aalto University and comprises 22 companies, 2cities, 4 universities and two research centres. The total budget of the two year project is 22 M€ out of which 17 M€ is industrial RDI and 5 M€ public research. The project covers the battery metals value chain from explorationand mining through refining and active material production to recycling. The technical work is supported by business studies and international collaboration. The BATCircle International Advisory Board comprises Scandinavian companies like Northvolt and Nikkelverk as well as European institutionssuch as EIT RawMaterials and KIC InnoEnergy.
Following thenational investments into battery raw materials, Finland has been invited to chair the raw materials and recycling working groups within the frameworks of SET Plan Action 7 Implementation Working Group and the recently launched European Technology and Innovation Platform (ETIP) Batteries Europe. BATCircle has hosted two workshops to address the European RDI needs within these frameworks.
The FinnishBATCircle ecosystem and the results of the European workshops will be discussedin the presentation.
