Battery Research Center

The COMET Center Battery4Life is dedicated to improving the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of battery technologies. To this end, it conducts research to gain a deep understanding of battery behavior in challenging situations in both mobile and stationary applications. In addition to purely technical aspects, legal and economic issues relating to the sustainable use of batteries across their life cycle phases are also taken into account. The center brings together leading international industry partners—automobile manufacturers, battery suppliers, development, electronics, energy, and other companies—with Austrian and international experts from the scientific community.

Our Research

Battery Research Chain

The research focus at Battery4Life covers the entire life cycle of battery systems, from battery cell production to battery recycling. It starts with battery cell design and continues through the optimization of battery packs and systems to integration into practical applications. The focus then shifts to use over the entire service life, including aging and monitoring. Finally, Battery4Life develop approaches for reuse/further use and second-life concepts to increase their service life, reuse batteries sustainably and safe resources.

Battery Research Strategy

Our research focuses on analyzing the multi-physical behavior of batteries over their entire lifetime, encompassing normal operation as well as critical and over-critical situations. Under a wide range of conditions, load cases, and application scenarios, we develop methods to optimize battery safety, performance, efficiency, and sustainability. Our work addresses all types of batteries and levels of integration, from individual battery components to fully integrated energy storage systems. This research is carried out within a cooperative and interdisciplinary framework, bringing together expertise from multiple scientific and engineering disciplines to advance the reliable and responsible use of battery technologies.