Smart Otaniemi webinar: Future of Sustainable Batteries 1.12.2020

How can we guarantee that there are enough materials to cope with the increasing need for energy storage? What if batteries would be easily recycled, or even compostable?

Reaching the set climate and energy targets creates a need for clean, safe and affordable energy storage solutions, which are based on circular economy principles. Read more on Marja Vilkman’s and Tanja Kallio’s blog about what solutions we have to find and resolve in order to tackle the problems and needs related to batteries.

We also organised a panel discussion with top-notch specialists on Tuesday 1 December at 3pm (EET). Check the recording of the event in Smart Otaniemi YouTube channel and load the materials here.

Marja Vilkman, Senior Scientist from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, was leading the panel discussion. Marja Vilkman has close to 20 years of experience in materials and processing of flexible electronics. She works with both energy harvesting and storage devices, and recently, she has focused more and more on next generation batteries. Dr. Vilkman is coordinating the HIDDEN project about self-healing Li-metal batteries, which belongs to the Battery 2030+ initiative, and she is working as an expert in Batteries Europe Working Group 1 (New and emerging battery technologies).

In the panel Marja were accompanied by: 

Tanja Kallio, Associate Professor from Aalto University Department of Chemistry and Materials Science. Prof. Tanja Kallio’s research group focuses on development and investigation of electrochemically active materials and their integration into energy conversion and storage devices. For the sate-of-the-art and the next generation lithium batteries, her work covers structure – activity – durability interrelations of active materials and interphases between them aiming to improve batteries performance and cycle life. She participates several national and international lithium battery projects and is the contact person for the EU’s Battery 2030+ network in Finland.

Andras Kovacs from BroadBit Batteries. Andras Kovacs is a co-founder of BroadBit Batteries, which is pioneering more cost-effective, scalable, and high-performing batteries. He has been researching innovative batteries for 8 years, and is the inventor on the company’s several patents.

Simon Michaux, Associate Professor of Geometallurgy from Geological Survey of Finland. Simon has experience in the Australian mining industry research and private sector, and also in recycling research in Belgium.  He joined GTK in Finland to work on mineral intelligence to research data patterns in the global mining, energy and industrial ecosystems.  He now works with GTK Mintec in process separation.

Ilkka Homanen, Head of Batteries from Finland program at Business Finland. Finland is one of the few countries where all of the key minerals used in the production of lithium-ion batteries – cobalt, nickel, lithium and graphite – are found in the soil. Finland has everything needed for the creation of an important battery cluster, and the Batteries from Finland activity seeks to build networks that will help promote the involvement in the European and, consequently, the global battery network.