SPRIND Challenge: Tech Metal Transformation

Funding for projects dedicated to developing innovative processes for the recovery of critical metals from complex waste streams.

Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen (SPRIND – German Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation) acts as a forum between the German government, industry, and research representatives. SPRIND finances international research and development projects for ground-breaking technologies and topics that have the potential to fundamentally improve people’s lives.

The aim of the Tech Metal Transformation Challenge is to develop and validate innovative processes for recovering critical metals from complex waste streams such as electronic waste, batteries, electronic components, or other well-justified starting material. Biological, chemical and physical-mechanical approaches are to be combined in a modular system to gain access of these critical metals. The aim is not only to recover individual metals but advance the development of an end-to-end process in which recovered metals can be directly reused as functional materials with a life-after-next in mind.

Funded projects should develop novel recycling processes and demonstrate them in an integrated prototype. The prototype should be capable of economically recovering critical metals from complex waste streams and directly producing commercially attractive materials with diverse conformity, purity, and composition for existing and new markets (eg, high-entropy alloys, nanoparticles) in a cyclic process according to the life-after-next principle. This recycling process should be environmentally friendly and as energy-efficient as possible, including safety concepts for toxic gases and the emission of brominated flame retardants.

Projects should combine several concepts from different scientific disciplines (eg, computer science, mechanical engineering, chemistry, materials science and biology).

The programme is divided into three stages:

• Stage 1: Validation and proof-of-concept (TRL 2/3 to TRL4)
• Stage 2: Process integration and increased efficiency (TRL4 to TRL5/6)
• Stage 3: Demonstration and scalability (TRL5/6 to TRL7)

After each stage, projects are evaluated; this evaluation will influence the structure going forward and the decision as to whether and to what extent a further stage will be carried out.

The programme takes a form of a challenge with the number of participating teams decreasing in each stage as follows:

• 4-8 teams in stage 1
• 3-6 teams in stage 2
• 2-4 teams in stage 3

At the end of stage 3, the final winning team will be announced.