BIG-MAP: EU project to speed up battery development
EU project BIG-MAP wants to significantly accelerate the speed of battery development while keeping an eye on sustainability. 34 partners aim to intensify data exchange and cooperation and operate within the broader framework of the BATTERY2030+ initiative.
Cooperation through data sharing is crucial in BIG-MAP, short for Battery Interface Genome – Materials Acceleration Platform. The project explicitly aims “to develop a common European data infrastructure and cooperative workflows capable of autonomously collecting, processing and using data from all areas of the battery development cycle”.
Project leader Tejs Vegge of Denmark’s Technical University (DTU) puts their aim more simply but no less ambitious: “we have to reinvent the way we invent batteries”. In concrete numbers, this means accelerating development time by 5-10 times relative to the current rate of discovery within the next 5-10 years, according to the announcement.
Measures to reach the goal include AI, also for data on new materials, and high-performance computing to analyse big data. BIG-MAP also envisions the use of robots “to explore the complex chemical space” much faster. Data sharing will also facilitate the work of researchers spread out across space and timezones at different partner institutions.
BIG-MAP is the most extensive single effort within the Battery2030+ initiative and unites 34 institutions from 15 countries. Led by Denmarks’s TU, the project also includes partners such as the KIT and the Ulm University with its joint Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU) from Germany through the CELEST platform.
Another focus is sustainability as Maximilian Fichtner, scientific spokesman for CELEST stresses as the professor sees use cases in renewables for the yet to be developed batteries. He adds, “A realignment of the existing discovery, development and manufacturing processes for battery materials and technologies is necessary to enable Europe to compete with its main rivals in the USA and Asia”.
BIG-MAP has a budget of 16 million euros to run over three years with an option for another seven years.
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