The race for European battery independence just found its next battleground in an unexpected place: the trash heap.

On June 2, an advanced battery materials firm, Vianode, and German sustainable recycling pioneer, Cylib, signed an agreement to turn old batteries into vehicle components. 

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) establishes a partnership to develop and supply recycled graphite for high-performance battery anodes.

Under the agreement, Cylib will supply high-quality graphite concentrate recovered through its proprietary recycling technology, while Vianode will test and validate its performance in anode materials.

“Closing the loop on battery materials is essential for building a truly sustainable battery value chain,” said Burkhard Straube, CEO of Vianode. 

“By collaborating with Cylib on the integration of recycled graphite into advanced anode materials, we aim to strengthen circularity for battery graphite, reduce reliance on virgin raw materials, and support the EU’s ambitions for a more resilient, low‑carbon battery ecosystem,” Straube added in the press release.

Recycled graphite supply chain

Graphite is an important material for lithium-ion battery anodes due to its unique crystalline structure, which enables efficient lithium-ion store and release. 

In high-performance batteries, the anode requires either highly purified natural graphite or precision-engineered synthetic graphite to maximize electrical conductivity, enhance structural durability, and enable fast charging. 

The material’s global demand has been increasing due to the high demand for tech like electric vehicles. For this reason, the industry is increasingly focused on sourcing high-performance graphite that balances extreme energy density with strict environmental standards. Hence, it is driving the shift toward localized production and advanced recycling methods.

Currently, Europe relies heavily on imports of virgin graphite, a critical mineral tightly controlled by global markets outside the bloc.

With the integration of Cylib’s proprietary recycling technology directly into Vianode’s advanced anode production process, the two companies plan to turn spent battery waste into high-performance vehicle components. 

If successful, this closed-loop manufacturing system will create a sustainable, domestic supply chain that slashes carbon emissions while securing Europe’s material independence.

Slashing emissions

The process relies on a delicate handoff. First, Cylib will extract high-quality graphite concentrate from spent batteries using its water-based OLiC (Optimized Lithium and Graphite Recovery) technology. 

As per the press release, this system has a 90 percent recovery rate for critical metals such as lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, and manganese. Better yet, it slices carbon emissions by 80 percent compared to normal mining.

Then, Vianode steps in.

The Norwegian company will test the recycled material at its pilot facilities, blending it into formulations for its next-generation synthetic anodes. Vianode’s synthetic graphite already has a carbon footprint 90 percent lower than that of standard industry materials. 

Injecting recycled graphite into the mix pushes them closer to a strict 2030 climate target: emitting just 1.0 kg of CO₂ equivalent per kilogram of graphite produced.

If the pilot projects succeed at a commercial scale, both firms intend to negotiate a binding commercial supply agreement.

The European Union has placed immense pressure on automakers to slash manufacturing emissions and source materials locally. This partnership offers a glimpse of how the industry might actually pull that off without sacrificing vehicle range or battery life.

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The devil wears Prada. And soon, so will the astronauts heading to the moon.

Commercial aerospace company Axiom Space and luxury fashion house Prada showcased the innermost layer of NASA’s next-generation lunar spacesuit.

It is called the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG) and will be worn inside the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit. 

The garment is the first line of defense for astronauts exploring the moon’s surface for the first time in over half a century.

“The future of space exploration will not be built by any one entity alone, and our partnership with Prada is proof of that,” said Dr. Jonathan Cirtain, Axiom Space CEO and President.

“By bringing together the best in both aerospace engineering as well as luxury craftmanship and advanced product development, we have developed a garment that neither company could have created independently, and that is exactly the kind of cross-industry thinking that will define the next era of human spaceflight,” Cirtain added.

Prada is going to the moon

When astronauts step onto the lunar South Pole during NASA’s upcoming Artemis IV mission, the environment will be brutal.

Temperatures switch violently between blistering heat in direct sunlight and absolute freezing cold in deep shadow. To survive outside a spacecraft for up to eight hours, the human body needs an artificial atmosphere. 

Spacewalks are physically grueling missions in which astronauts generate intense body heat that cannot dissipate naturally in the vacuum of space.

Without intervention, crew members would rapidly overheat while moving and exploring. To prevent this, the LCVG serves as a wearable radiator, using an integrated network of chilled-water tubes to continuously absorb and dissipate excess body heat.

Using Prada’s expertise in engineered knitting, advanced 3D modeling, and high-performance materials, the collaboration produced a next-generation garment optimized for comfort during spacewalks lasting up to eight hours.

Furthermore, Prada’s knowledge of specialized fibers ensured that the garment was durable enough to be worn repeatedly over the long duration of lunar missions.

Woven directly into the specialized fibers is a complex web of flexible tubes. Chilled water constantly flows through these channels, routing across the body’s major muscle groups to absorb metabolic heat and pump it away to the suit’s backpack life-support system.

Cooling system

In an industry first for an inner spacesuit layer, the LCVG features a fully redundant backup cooling loop that instantly takes over if the primary system fails on the lunar surface.

The garment also pulls double duty by managing respiration, using a separate ventilation loop to gently blow fresh oxygen across the astronaut’s face while simultaneously vacuuming away exhaled carbon dioxide for scrubbing and recirculation.

“Every minute astronauts spend outside their vehicle, the LCVG is working to keep them safe,” said Russell Ralston, Axiom Space Senior Vice President of Spacecraft Development. 

“It manages their thermal environment, supports their breathing, and does it all while they’re pushing their bodies to the limit. The work we have done with Prada has taken that capability to a level we could not have achieved alone,” Ralston added. 

Moving the collaboration inward was a natural step for the two companies. In 2024, they showcased the heavy, protective white outer shell of the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU).

The exterior layer is built to stop micrometeoroids and extreme radiation; the inner layer handles the delicate physics of human comfort.

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Penn State researchers have built a human-eye-inspired device to prevent self-driving cars from going blind in changing light conditions. 

It is a new type of “photomemristor” that mimics the human eye, adapting to mixed, changing light from bright to dark in seconds.

“Self-driving cars are exposed to a mixture of light levels in use — imagine the contrast of the dark sky with the bright headlights of other cars when driving at night,” said Larry Cheng, James L. Henderson Jr. Memorial Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Penn State. 

“It can be difficult for an artificial optical system to distinguish details, like the glow of a red light, in these mixed lightning conditions,” the co-corresponding author added.

Mimicking the human eye

Autonomous vehicles remain surprisingly fragile when encountering high-contrast lighting environments, despite being equipped with advanced cameras and powerful AI. 

These robotic eyes perform well in stable weather conditions, but are not accustomed to sudden flashes of light, such as oncoming headlights piercing a dark midnight sky. It can trigger catastrophic data glitches that blind the vehicle‘s system.

The team of engineers has finally found a workaround. And the secret is copying the wet, organic mechanics of the human eye.

Researchers unveiled a tiny hardware component that can adapt from blinding brightness to deep shadow in just seconds.

While our eyes require roughly 20 to 30 minutes to fully acclimate to extreme changes in light, this artificial system handles the transition almost instantly.

To build it, scientists had to rethink how computers process light. Standard cameras capture an image and send it to a separate computer brain for analysis. This takes time and immense computing power. The team used photomemristors. These are microscopic electrical components that can simultaneously sense light and store it as data — mimicking how neurons work.

But the key development lies in how the devices manage sensitivity.

4×4 grid for testing

The human eye uses rod cells for low light and cone cells for bright conditions. When a bright light hits your eyes, the pigments in your rods temporarily “bleach” out, leaving the cones to take over. To mimic this, the researchers paired a powdery white compound called titanium oxide with a stretchy, gel-like plastic known as PEDOT:PSS.

The titanium oxide captures ambient light and converts it into an electric current. That current forces the plastic layer to react with the surrounding air. In the dark, the plastic rapidly sucks in water vapor and swells. In bright light, it dries out quickly.

This automatic sweating and swelling acts as a physical volume knob for light. It self-regulates.

To test the tech, researchers built a miniature 4×4 grid and paired it with an AI neural network. They gave it a classic ophthalmologist challenge: spot a dimly lit letter “F” against a massively bright backdrop.

The system didn’t flinch. It took just seven rounds of training for the device to reach a remarkable 95 percent accuracy in pattern recognition.

The implications stretch far beyond avoiding highway accidents. The team has already filed a provisional patent to expand their use.

In the future, factory robots could operate flawlessly in erratic, flickering industrial environments. More importantly, Cheng believes this technology could eventually yield sophisticated artificial optics, giving adaptive, reliable sight back to the visually impaired.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications on June 9.

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