6 Companies to Partner on Spherical Graphite Development

Elcora Advanced Materials Corp. (TSXV:ERA), Northern Graphite Corp. (TSXV:NGC), Nouveau Monde Mining Enterprises Inc. (TSXV:NOU), Metals of Africa Ltd. (ASX:MTA), Coulometrics LLC and a private industry partner announced plans to jointly acquire a micronizing and spheronizing mill to produce spherical graphite.
Spherical graphite is used in the anodes of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs).
As quoted in the press release:

The mill will be added to Coulometrics’ battery production and test facility. Considerable work has already been completed by Coulometrics to produce SPG and to evaluate many different suppliers of spheronizing equipment. Northern Graphite has financially supported most of this work and has agreed to share its current knowledge on spheronizing with the other participating companies. All of the participating companies will share in any spheronizing technologies that are developed going forward. The spheronizing equipment will be used to evaluate and optimize the yield of SPG from various graphite mine concentrates and to develop next generation and high-yield spheronization technology to meet the demanding cost targets for automotive LIB applications. Ultimately, the goal of all the parties is to achieve full qualification of their materials by LIB manufacturing companies.

Dr. Edward Buiel, who will lead the development and testing process, commented:

The addition of the spheronizing equipment will enable us to produce and test Coated Spherical Purified Graphite “C-SPG” from end to end within North America. This will rapidly advance our C-SPG development efforts and we believe it is the first real effort by junior graphite companies to address the needs of the LIB industry. It also demonstrates the commitment of those involved to develop next generation, high performance anode materials for LIBs which will provide a significant cost advantage and a greatly reduced environmental impact. They will also represent a major improvement over methods currently employed in China.

Click here to read the full press release.