INERRANT meets in Ústí nad Labem for 1st Progress Meeting

Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic, 8-9 April 2025 – In the beginning of this month the partners of INERRANT met for their first progress meeting in Ústí nad Labem in Czech Republic, at the location of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University (UJEP). This was a great opportunity for all consortium members to meet again a little bit less than a year after the project has started and discuss the state of the art research conducted within INERRANT.

After being greeted by Pavel Kuráň, Dean of the Faculty of Environment of UJEP, the partners dove straight into a high-quality scientific workshop addressing the developments made by the consortium titled “From Materials and Processes to the Development of Next-Generation LIB Technologies”. Partners FORTH, UCD and UJEP led the discussions by addressing the upcoming challenges that INERRANT will face on its way to achieving the set objectives. Hereafter UJEP provided all partners with the opportunity visit their labs for hybrid spinning membranes and LIB recycling, providing insights into the work conducted within INERRANT. The meeting continued with a workshop on the upscaling approaches of INERRANT. PLEIONE engaged the consortium in a discussion on the two-step upscaling approach and provided a glance on the upcoming business model and exploitation strategy. This strategy also involves collaborations beyond the project’s consortium; this is why INERRANT was delighted to welcome its two sister projects SAFELOOP and SAGELI, who presented their respective project and approach, which provided the basis for a discussion on possibilities for organising joint activities in the coming months. The first day ended with an overview of the sustainability aspects of the projects, discussing the recycling processes as well as the whole LCA approach. Partners UJEP and IBG led the discussions and helped the consortium to keep the discussion open beyond the first day over a dinner organised in Ústí nad Labem.

The second day started with VERKOR presenting the safety challenges in a combined workshop with KEYSIGHT, detailing the steps from safety tests to industrialisation. As this will be a defining milestone for the project’s success, all partners were excited to participate in the workshop and provided key inputs on this step conducted by Work Package 6. The meeting concluded with a communication & dissemination workshop and management updates.

After the official end of the meeting the consortium got the opportunity to visit two partner’s facilities, IBG and NanoSpace Technologies, located not far from UJEP. The visits provided major insights on the recycling aspects and the work on technology optimization of single, „core-shell or co-axial“ and mixed-layered fibers with stimuli-tunable response, the functionalisation of fibers with additives and preliminary upscaling and upscaling separator technologies to industrial level as well as demonstration activities.

Participants left inspired and motivated and are now looking forward to the next in person meeting in January 2026!