Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h.c. Bernd Friedrich, born in 1958, studied metallurgy and electrometallurgy at RWTH Aachen University, graduating in 1988.

After many years in management positions at GfE Nürnberg and VARTA Batterie AG, he returned to RWTH Aachen University in 1999 as Full Professor of Metallurgical Process Technology and Metal Recycling.

His institute (IME) covers the topic of “circular economy” at the RWTH as well as in the EIT RawMaterials for NRW.

As a result of the steadily growing interest in battery recycling on the part of the public, politicians and industry, the IME has been systematically working on recycling concepts for all common battery systems since 2000 with the aim of developing optimal industry-related recycling concepts for all common battery systems.

In this context, processes for lead batteries, nickel-cadmium batteries, nickel-metal hydride batteries, primary device batteries, Li-ion device batteries and Li-ion traction batteries have been tested up to demo scale, some of which have already been industrialised and rated as BAT (Best Available Technology).

Prof Friedrich has published well over 75 publications and papers at international conferences.

His work was honoured in 2008 with Europe’s most highly endowed industry prize from the German Economic Association in Düsseldorf and in 2012 with the “German Raw Material Efficiency Prize” from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy as an outstanding example of raw material and material-efficient products, processes or services and application-oriented research results.