In recent years, many events related to food and public health, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, commonly known as mad cow disease), dioxin, bird flu and swine flu, brought the issue of food security to the center of international attention. Many countries established strict rules to ensure the food traceability “from farm to fork” to meet the demand of consumer safety and to ensure public health. Consequently, the concepts of controlled supply chain, brand of quality and traceability of food products have had a strong evolution. Companies in the food production sector must evolve and change their organizational and management chain to satisfy increasingly stringent government rules and to respond to the requirements of the market. From this point of view, NFC (Near Field Communication) has all the requirements to become the main technology for traceability in the various food sectors. This paper proposes a solution to gather information throughout the entire food supply chain and bring it directly to the consumer. The architecture consists of a complex identification system based on NFC tags, which cumulates data during all phases of the production process. The aim of this work is to keep track of the information generated during food processing, not only for traceability purposes, but also for enhancing and optimizing production. The data generated by the traceability system are collected in a cloud database through apps on Android smartphones. The information is accessible by the consumers through a public Android application. The pork supply chain has been used as an application example of the proposed methodology.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) can play a crucial role in the decarbonization process that is being tackled worldwide; millions of electric vehicles are already provided with or are directly powered by LIBs, and a large number of them will flood the markets within the next 8–10 years. Proper disposal strategies are required, and sustainable and environmental impacts need to be considered. Despite still finding little applicability in the industrial field, recycling could become one of the most sustainable options to handle the end of life of LIBs. This review reports on the most recent advances in sustainable processing for spent LIB recycling that is needed to improve the LIB value chain, with a special focus on green leaching technologies for Co-based cathodes. Specifically, we provide the main state of the art for sustainable LIB recycling processes, focusing on the pretreatment of spent LIBs; we report on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies on the usage of acids, including mineral as well as organic ones; and summarize the recent innovation for the green recovery of valuable metals from spent LIBs, including electrochemical methods. The advantage of using green leaching agents, such as organic acids, which represent a valuable option towards more sustainable recycling processes, is also discussed. Organic acids can, indeed, reduce the economic, chemical, and environmental impacts of LIBs since post-treatments are avoided. Furthermore, existing challenges are identified herein, and suggestions for improving the effectiveness of recycling are defined.

Food traceability is a fundamental requirement for the agriculture of the future. A food traceability system should ensure food safety and quality control, allow authentication, fraud prevention and control by the authority, improve consumers’ safety and confidence. The agri-food supply chain is complex and difficult to handle due to the presence of various stakeholders and control authorities. Consequently, the complexity and the cost of traceability systems make it inapplicable for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This work defines of a food traceability system using existing low cost digital technologies with the possibility to be integrated into a database for public authority controls. Smartphone applications allow consumer involvement and a bidirectional interaction between the company and the consumer. This work proposes the use of smartphone with NFC technology in every phase of the food chain bringing the information to the final consumer. An advantage of the proposed system is the low cost and easy to use, allowing its diffusion in small and micro farms, regional typical products, bio productions. The applications developed and the database architecture have been customized to the extra virgin olive oil process. Final considerations evidence the economic advantage of the traceability system.

The wide diffusion of Full and Hybrid Electric Vehicles is stimulating research on electric energy storage systems and Battery Management Systems (BMS). The Battery management system must ensure many complex features such as charge control, battery-capacity monitoring, remaining run-time information and charge-cycle counting. An optimization of the BMS can allow an improvement on security of the vehicle, performance of the engine, energy optimization and extension of the life of the battery. The main objective of this work is to develop a simulation environment based on SystemC to design and optimize the Battery Management System including a lithium-ion battery model and CAN communication interface. The BMS has been validated using real-world scenarios and data.

The market for lithium-ion batteries is growing exponentially. The performance of battery cells is growing due to improving production technology, but market request is growing even more rapidly. Modeling and characterization of single cells and an efficient simulation environment is fundamental for the development of an efficient battery management system. The present work is devoted to defining a novel lumped electrothermal circuit of a single battery cell, the extraction procedure of the parameters of the single cell from experiments, and a simulation environment in SystemC-WMS for the simulation of a battery pack. The electrothermal model of the cell was validated against experimental measurements obtained in a climatic chamber. The model is then used to simulate a 48-cell battery, allowing statistical variations among parameters. The different behaviors of the cells in terms of state of charge, current, voltage, or heat flow rate can be observed in the results of the simulation environment.

European self-sufficiency in the battery sector is one of the major EU needs. The key lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) materials demand is expected to increase in the next decade as a consequence of the increment in the LIBs production and a massive amount of spent LIBs will flood global markets. Hence, these waste streams would be a potential source of secondary raw materials to be valorized, under the principle of circular economy. European governments first, and then companies in the battery sector second, are addressing many efforts in improving legislation on batteries and accumulators. This study explores the current legislative aspects, the main perspective from the producer’s point of view, and the possibility to guarantee a proper recycle of spent LIBs. A monitoring proposal by means of a survey has been carried out and the Italian context, which has been taken as an example of the European context, and it was used to evaluate the practical implication of the current legislation. The main result of the survey is that a specific identification as well as regulations for LIBs are needed. The benefit from a cradle-to-cradle circular economy is still far from the actual situation but several industrial examples and ongoing European projects show the importance and feasibility of the reuse (e.g., second life) and recycle of LIBs.