Battery Materials R&D Centre of Excellence, UK: Validating the lithium refining process flowsheet and designing a facility for rapid scale up

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The fast-growing battery-electric vehicle (EV) and storage industries demand battery production upscales rapidly. Battery supply chains include cathode-active-material (CAM) manufacturers, cathode manufacturers, battery manufacturers (gigafactories) and automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), which must urgently secure upstream lithium chemical supplies.The UK and EU currently depend on Chinese refined lithium chemical imports, driving major price and volume uncertainty. Onshore lithium refining is essential to meet the c.800,000 tonne per annum European 2030 demand from EVs, with demand from energy storage not widely factored into forecasts.Green Lithium plans to build the world's first lithium scale-up plant in Teesside. Its Scale-Up Plant will be an intermediate-sized, commercial-scale operation sitting between pilot-scale and large-scale industrial facility. The Scale-Up Plant will deploy the low-carbon 'alkali-leach' hydrometallurgy process for producing lithium hydroxide monohydrate from raw material alpha-spodumene concentrate, a lithium-bearing mineral.