Paweł Maciejewski

Lithium-ion batteries are the primary energy source for modern electric mobility, making the processing of battery waste and the recovery of critical raw materials – particularly lithium, cobalt, manganese, and nickel – a major challenge for sustainable industrial development. The rapidly growing demand for energy storage technologies further intensifies the need for efficient and environmentally benign recycling processes. This study investigates the hydrometallurgical leaching of black mass derived from LCO-type lithium-ion batteries obtained exclusively through manual dismantling and mechanical processing, without any prior thermal or chemical pretreatment. Reductive leaching was performed using a ternary system consisting of sulfuric acid, adipic acid, and hydrogen peroxide at 85°C for one 120 minutes, with a liquid-to-solid ratio of 10. Under these conditions, the leaching efficiencies reached 83.91% for Co, 85.86% for Li, 76.98% for Al, 94.16% for Cu, 58.48% for Ni. The results demonstrate that synergistic organic-acid-based reductive leaching offers a promising alternative for the recovery of valuable metals from polymetallic lithium-ion battery waste, contributing to more sustainable and cleaner recycling practices.

The European Union’s Erasmus+ program strongly supports mobility for finding training or work opportunities. However, in the era of pandemics, there is a need to find remedies for restricted movement. One solution is to create a platform for collaboration in the spheres of work and training. This article aims to identify the crucial factors for the development of a novel ecosystem for the European education mobility. This mixed-method study employed interviews with 140 respondents. The authors utilized the NVivo software, specifically its Word Frequency Query functionality, to identify relevant features in the four main categories: competence acquisition, pedagogy, organization, and technology. Findings suggest that the acquisition of competencies should be oriented towards the future labor market, students prefer gamified activities, the platform should be organized to allow for easy job and training searches, and 2D and 3D solutions should be combined for versatility. Overall, future-oriented content, motivation, and technologically diverse activities are positively perceived by students and can be seen as a major trend in creating similar tools. This type of user experience research could also be extended to a group of teachers and administrative personnel engaged in education mobility as service activities. This research was conducted as part of the ERASMUS+ project eMediator.

Energy security education explores various issues, such as a secure and competitive economy and nuclear safety. In the context of energy transition and sustainable development, it also addresses the world’s reliance on nonrenewable and renewable energy sources. The aim of this study was to identify research trends pertaining to energy security education, paying particular attention to renewable and nonrenewable sources. This was accomplished with the use of mixed-method research in two steps. The first step was a text-mining and content analysis of publications on energy security education published on the Web of Science platform between 2016 and 2021. From 660 publications on energy security education, titles, abstracts, and keywords were extracted and analysed with NVivo software to identify the most frequent concepts on energy sources in publications. The concepts were associated with nonrenewable energy sources (coal, natural gas, uranium, petroleum, and fossil fuels), nuclear power, and renewable energy sources (hydro, geothermal, solar, tide/wave/ocean, wind, solid biofuels, biogases, liquid biofuels, and renewable municipal waste). The second step was conducting detailed searches with Boolean operators, where “energy security education” was juxtaposed with the distinguished keywords. All searches on energy security education showed that publication activity tended to decrease, while citations increased. The most explored topics concerned: “fossil fuels”, “oil, petroleum”, “renewable” energy, and “solar” energy sources. An increasing trend was observed for all renewable energy sources as well as selected nonrenewable sources: “oil, petroleum”, “nonrenewable”, and “coal”. Additionally, R-squared values were calculated to indicate the fit of the trendline to the model. Due to the technologically enhanced energy transition and didactic innovations, education focussing on energy sources is expected to remain in demand. Curricula will need to be revised in the future to better reflect this reality.

The Zn(II) and Mn(II) removal by an ion flotation process from model and real dilute aqueous solutions derived from waste batteries was studied in this work. The research aimed to determine optimal conditions for the removal of Zn(II) and Mn(II) from aqueous solutions after acidic leaching of Zn-C and Zn-Mn waste batteries. The ion flotation process was carried out at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure. Two organic compounds used as collectors were applied, i.e., m-dodecylphosphoric acid 32 and m-tetradecylphosphoric 33 acid in the presence of a non-ionic foaming agent (Triton X-100, 29). It was found that both compounds can be used as collectors in the ion flotation for Zn(II) and Mn(II) removal process. Process parameters for Zn(II) and Mn(II) flotation have been established for collective or selective removal metals, e.g., good selectivity coefficients equal to 29.2 for Zn(II) over Mn(II) was achieved for a 10 min process using collector 32 in the presence of foaming agent 29 at pH = 9.0.

The aim of this paper is to introduce a concept of military training using a three-dimensional platform, known as Sansar. This is an extensive virtual world that users can access via accessories. We propose basic assumptions, instructional design

The aim of the article is to prove that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can serve as viable didactic tools in the CBRN troops’ education and training. The analysis of selected case studies reveals that specific competences can be trained with the support of social media, e-learning platforms, virtual worlds, mobile technologies or even augmented reality technologies. The unique qualities of these tools, such as an easy access to the training content, interactivity, or possibility of simulating different scenarios allow for designing a training process tailored both for larger groups and an individual.