Canada-based Northern Graphite Advances Purification Technology

Published: February 9, 2016 |

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Northern Graphite Corporation has had a major international engineering company complete a fatal flaw analysis and scoping study with respect to the company’s proprietary purification process. It was concluded that Northern’s process does not present any major technical challenges, can be carried out using relatively standard processing equipment and will not generate any harmful waste products.

Capital costs are estimated at approximately US$10.5 million (including a 35 percent contingency) for a facility to purify 5,000 tonnes per year of either flake graphite concentrate or spherical graphite (SPG), the anode material used in lithium ion batteries (LiBs). Operating costs to purify SPG to 99.95 percent C were estimated at approximately US$0.50/kg. Capital and operating costs are based on conservative reagent volumes and retention times and could be reduced with further testing and optimization which will be done through the construction of a pilot plant.

“The purification of mine concentrates is critical to accessing a number of value added markets. This is the first viable, cost competitive alternative to the Chinese acid based process which is difficult to use in the west because of environmental/regulatory issues. The large and XL flake nature of our deposit provides us with the luxury of focusing almost entirely on high value, high growth markets such as SPG, high purity flake graphite and expandable graphite (used in thermal management for consumer electronics, fuel cells, advanced building materials, etc.),” said Gregory Bowes, CEO of Northern Graphite.

A number of technologies that are related to Northern’s process have been investigated and patented in the past. The company is not aware of any currently being used to purify meaningful quantities of natural graphite, likely because they cannot achieve required purity levels, reagent consumption is too high or because of technical challenges associated with the reagents and scaling to commercial volumes. The company believes its process can economically purify commercial quantities of its natural graphite concentrate to 99.95 percent C in an environmentally sustainable manner. Initial discussions with the company’s consulting engineers and legal counsel indicate that the process and associated equipment should be patentable.

About Northern Graphite
Northern’s Bissett Creek graphite deposit is an advanced, pre-development stage project that has a feasibility study and its major environmental permit. Subject to the completion of operational and species at risk permitting, which are at an advanced stage, Northern is in a position to commence construction in 2016 subject to the availability of financing. The Bissett Creek project is located close to infrastructure in eastern Canada, has the highest reported percentage of large/XL/XXL flake, a reasonable capital cost and the highest operating margin of any new graphite project. As a result, the company believes it also has the best economics and lowest marketing risk. Bissett Creek provides a natural competitive advantage in the LiB field as it has a high percentage of battery grade material, a high yield on the conversion of mine concentrate to SPG, and a pristine, highly ordered crystal structure that makes purification easier and could result in higher capacity batteries. Because of Chinese supply issues and the rapid growth in new uses such as LiBs, new western sources of graphite supply will be needed, particularly for large/XL/XXL flake graphite.

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