Greening Li-Ion Batteries: GreenSpeed, BatWoMan & NOVOC in Action

09 February 2026

Since 2021, Horizon Europe has been funding programmes for research and innovation, now getting close to the end in 2027. Those focusing on battery research are grouped under BATT4EU, a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the Batteries European Partnership Association (BEPA), the private voice of research and innovation across the battery value chain.

To highlight the success of the BATT4EU projects, BEPA organised BATT4EU Success Stories, a series of webinars to showcase their achievements. On 13 November 2025, greenSPEED, BatWoMan and NoVOC presented their work.

The greenSPEED EU Project aims to reduce energy consumption and environmentally harmful substances in battery cell production, advanced high‑silicon anodes, and dry-processed cathodes, and improve the overall manufacturability and integration of innovative electrode technologies. GreenSPEED has made some technical advances in its research: pre-lithiation significantly improved cycle life (up to +30%), pure silicon anodes show >300% expansion, which requires careful formation but shows competitive DCIR performance. For cathodes, the project investigated a dry‑extrusion process using ethylene carbonate as a removable additive. It underlined the influence of binder types on processability and mechanical stability, optimising composition, screw speed and extrusion temperature, as well as adhesion to the current collector by using primered aluminum foil. Overall, all innovative process technologies were applied and demonstrated in full cells, with a high Si-content anode demonstrated in a stacked pouch or wound-type cell and a dry-processed cathode demonstrated in pouch cells.

The BatWoMan BatWoMan project’s goal is to enable low-cost, VOC-free, energy‑efficient Li‑ion cell production and focus on industrially realistic improvements rather than bleeding-edge performance figures. The project has implemented a new “revolver-style” machine design that allows drying electrolyte filling with drastically less dry‑room time, with potential energy cuts of up to ~75% for specific steps. In addition, the Battery Data Space demonstrator aligned with future Digital Product Passport requirements and online process optimisation models to reduce trial‑and‑error in coating, drying, and calendering. The project discovered that, in water-based electrode processing, substitution of CMC binders with lignin-based systems results in higher solid content (up to 73%) and stable performance. Additionally, laser structuring enhances high-C-rate performance with a minimal mass penalty (~6%) and achieves a significant reduction in formation time while maintaining performance integrity. Therefore, BatWoMan has delivered realistic, production-ready concepts that manufacturers could adopt soon.

The NoVOC project aims to eliminate VOCs in electrode manufacturing by advancing water-based and dry‑electrode processes while developing sustainable cells in cylindrical and pouch formats for e-mobility. The project developed NMC 811 and Si/C graphite formulations using aqueous processing with stable slurries and surface‑coated NMC811 improved by water-based process stability. NoVOC processed dry‑electrodes with PTFE-based binder systems for NMC811 and graphite. It achieved high initial capacities while facing some upscaling challenges, including dosing homogeneity, ribbing, curling, and adhesion. At the moment, NoVoc is advancing the pilot-scale electrode production. The final demonstrator cells will be assembled late 2025–early 2026, while the recycling, modelling, and LCA activities are already active.

GreenSpeed, BatWoMan and NoVOC projects, prove that it is possible to create environmentally sustainable processing techniques applied to large-scale electrode and cell component manufacturing for Li-ion batteries. These projects are just some examples of the innovation that the BATT4EU Partnership is bringing to Europe. The next big challenge: integrating these results into real manufacturing lines to strengthen the European battery value chain.