Lithium Australia (ASX: LIT) has successfully converted mine waste lithium-ion batteries into high-performance lithium-ion battery positive electrodes, so the recycling of battery materials has become ubiquitous.
Using the company's proprietary processing technology, the cathode is produced using lithium phosphate recovered from mixed metal dust (MMD).
Similarly, MMD comes from the recycling of used batteries by its subsidiary Envirostream Australia.
The battery test using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) material reached a capacity of 161 milliampere hours per gram mAh/g at a discharge rate of 0.1C, which is equal to or more than the best LFP cathode material on the market.
The specific energy capacity of the positive electrode material is determined in a button battery with a discharge rate of 0.1C, which means that the battery will discharge within 10 hours.
In general, manufacturers who use advanced LFP cathode materials to make batteries aim to achieve a capacity of more than 158 mAh/g.
Lithium Australia says the results confirm the flexibility of its process of producing high-quality cathode materials from lithium phosphate recovered from mineral waste and recycled batteries.
Managing Director Adrian Griffin said: "The low-cost reagents used to produce batteries vary by region."
"Our work is likely to make Australia, especially Western Australia, a more competitive environment for battery production."
Prior to this, the Western Australian state government allocated 13.2 million Australian dollars in project funding to attract a global cathode material manufacturer to establish production facilities in the state as part of its recovery plan.
At the same time, EcoGraf (ASX: EGR) proved that it is possible to recover all the carbon in battery anode waste produced by manufacturing lithium-ion batteries, as well as recover up to 99.6% of the carbon from a series of "black blocks" materials. Recycle the battery.
Black masses are residual graphite materials that remain after the high-value cathode metal is recovered from scrapped lithium-ion batteries in the hydrometallurgical process, and are usually landfilled.
The results show that it is possible to reuse recycled high-purity battery anode materials in the higher-priced industrial natural and synthetic graphite markets.
In terms of lithium development, Jindalee Resources (ASX: JRL) has improved the lithium grade and at the same time removed carbonates and other acid-consuming materials from the ore sourced by its McDermitt project in the United States through the use of waste washing.
In June, metallurgical testing work successfully extracted 97.9% of lithium from McDermitt ore by using hydrochloric acid leaching.
The ability to reduce the amount of acid consumed when processing McDermette ore is expected to improve the economics of the project.
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Post time: Aug-18-2020