FENICE

Fire rEsistant eNvironmental frIendly CompositEs

Principal Investigator: Valentina Medri
Involved personnel: Elena Landi, Francesco Miccio, Elettra Papa, Frederic Tullio Monteverde, Mauro Mazzocchi, Claudio Capiani, Cesare Melandri, Annalisa Natali Murri

Starting date: 01/07/2022
Duration: 42 months
Total funding: 3’526’858 €
Grant Agreement No.: 21099
Call: EIT RawMaterials
Topic: KAVA9 – D2 Acceleration – D2.2 Upscaling
Coordinator: Claudio Mingazzini (ENEA-TEMAF)
Consortium: Agenzia Nazionale per le Nuove Tecnologie, l’Energia e lo Sviluppo Economico Sostenibile (ENEA); Centro Ricerche Fiat S.C.p.A. (CRF – C.R.F.); CertiMaC soc. cons. a r.l.; Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR); CROSSFIRE S.R.L.; FUNDACION GAIKER; Gemmate Technologies; GS4C S.r.l.; MICROTEX COMPOSITES; Université de Bordeaux
Project Officer: Pier Luigi Franceschini
Official website:

FENICE is a TRL 8 upscaling project on recyclable & biobased Fibre Metal Laminates (FML) and other composites for lighter, more sustainable & safer battery box production, with higher fire resistance. By the end of 2025, FENICE will deliver (1) validated and precertified materials, with customisable characteristics, SDS and TDS; (2) battery box demonstrators & production optimisation; (3) LCA. By 2026, industrialisation in transports will start, aiming at producing 100k-1M battery boxes per year.

FENICE will achieve weight reduction in comparison to steel battery boxes, using FML and innovative composites, instead of light alloys with several advantages in terms of sustainability & safety. As verified in the aeronautic sector, FML are much more tolerant to fire accidents, impacts and fatigue. The project will develop prepregs as semifinished products, for reducing manufacturing costs and increasing reliability. These prepregs will be associated with thin metallic foils, with no structural function, so recycled Al can be used. Both prepregs and metallic foils can be circular-recycled, in line with EU Directives about EOL reuse of automotive materials. Glass and basalt will be the fibres of choice, to avoid non-recyclable and high embodied energy C-fibres. as validated in previous KAVA 5 “C2CC”, ensuring cost and environmental advantages. FENICE will develop the engineering for a patented novelbattery-box-concept, optimising for the final target production of one million pieces per year (starting from 100k in 2026). This implies that assembly, disassembly and recycling will have to be investigated for all the adopted materials with an industry driven approach. Several high sustainability resins will be investigated, with specific focus on biobased resins, C2C recyclable vitrimers and reactive thermoplastics. FE modeling will support component engineering & validation. Qualification, accelerated ageing in expected working conditions & precertification will be performed.

CNR-ISTEC will develop fiber-reinforced composites with an inorganic/geopolymer matrix to replace the FML technology in the case of applications that require fire resistance requirements at temperatures above 750° C.