SPRICE · Sustainable PRImary PRInted Cells Eco-designed for intelligent packaging

As we transition towards digital societies and industry 4.0 technology, the exponential rise of power hungry Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensing, actuating and communicating modules, will drastically increase the demand of primary consumer batteries in the near future. This raises an environmental alarm regarding their resource intensive production and the generation of hazardous electrical and electronics equipment waste (WEEE) after the end of its operation lifetime (EoL). SPRICE proposes a paradigm shift in the way primary batteries are conceived by implementing a circular economy strategy and by eco-designing for sustainability based on the device entire life cycle of such as material evaluation, manufacturing, utility and EoL. This work presents a sustainable primary battery for intelligent packaging application on cardboard box. The sustainable aspects entailed are selecting benign and abundant materials that are compliant with low-energy printed battery manufacturing and with the cardboard box established recycling infrastructure (paper waste stream). The proposal is undertaken at Fuelium, a Spanish company specialised in the development and commercialization of sustainable paper-based batteries. The project involves supervision by (Dr. Juan Pablo Esquivel, an expert in the field of paper-based fuel cell and sustainable battery development and Fuelium cofounder and scientific advisor. An additional secondment is planned at the institute of microelectronics in Barcelona, at Dr. Neus Sabate´s group, who is another expert in autonomous systems research. At the end, SPRICE will present a full demonstrator integrated on cardboard and meeting all sustainability and performance requirements. The revolutionary approach of this proposal will provide the departing point for sustainable power sources that are easily integrated into different packaging materials or IoT applications without disrupting the established value chains or reducing the existing recycling rates.