Turning Olivine Into Valuable NMC Battery Components

_{Olivine is a rather unpretentious rock. Olive-brown with yellow-green color, this hard but fragile mineral is considered the most abundant of the upper mantle of the earth. Chemically, olivine is magnesium iron silicate, although it also contains other elements. Economically, it is almost worthless. Its limited industrial utility extends over precious stones, metallic, ceramics and occasionally as a gravel for the construction of roads. On some mining sites, olivine is waste, stored in a heap on the surface.}

This is certainly not an obvious choice as a source of battery materials.

But that’s exactly how it is seen by a group of New Zealand engineers. Busy materials based in Christchurch have developed a patented chemical process that produces several precious minerals from olivine, leaving no harmful waste. Perhaps the most interesting for the energy sector is the rarest of its products-nickel-manmangani hydroxide which is More and more required for the production of lithium-ion battery.

Lasting mineral extraction process

The Aspirant’s pilot factory, which opened in February, is in an anonymous industrial field in the east of the city. A corner of the ground floor is dominated by a large stainless steel tank, which is connected to a series of smaller tanks arranged online. “In addition to our electrolysis system, the equipment is more typical of dairy factories,” explains Colum Rice, sales director in suction. “The process is elegant, but not massively complicated. Our inputs are rock, water and renewable energies, and our products are delivered without co₂ shows.

The rock is an olivine “flour”; A fine green-gray gray dust which is an undesirable by-product of the production of refractory sand. This is transported by the conveyor to screw in the largest tank, where it is combined with sulfuric acid. This acid leachate stage “transforms it into a kind of elementary soup”, explains Megan Danczyk, main chemical engineer aspiring. From there, it transmits the vessels of the reaction chain, where, thanks to the addition of caustic soda and careful management of the size and temperature of the particles, three products can be extracted individually.

Megan Danczyk, a main chemical engineer for budding materials, has a spoon of magnesium hydroxide.Mineral aspirants

About 50 percent of what the process is doing is silica which can be a partial replacement for Portland cement, the most common variety of cement in the world. About 40% is a magnesium product adapted to use in carbon sequestration, wastewater treatment and alloy manufacturing, among others. The 10% finals are a mixed metal product – iron combined with small quantities of a nickel -mananganese hydroxide. The battery industry calls it NMC, and it is the essential material for high power applications.

Danczyk explains that at the end of the extraction process, they only have a salty brine. “It goes to an electrolyzer, which recycles and regenerates the acid that we use for digestion and the base that we use to separate the products. It is a closed loop. We use the whole rock, and we treat it at low temperature and at the ambient pressure.”

Currently, the aspirant makes each separation consecutively, or as the rice says, “silica, recharging, nmc, recharging, magnesium”. The plan is to add two other parallel reaction chains, so that the process can operate continuously, shortening the execution of three days to one.

NMC materials in the manufacture of batteries

NMC materials are already widely used in the manufacture of batteries; By generally forming the cathode in high density lithium-ion batteries, or for electrical systems that must be frequently cycled, such as electrical tools, large-scale energy storage and electric vehicles. “What we were able to produce here corresponds to the specifications of what is currently used in the battery space,” explains Danczyk.

Currently, most industrial NMC materials are manufactured by combining salts from their three main ingredients, and each of those who appear regularly on critical mineral lists due to their growing importance in our modern world. The challenge with critical minerals is to access it. Most of the planet’s nickel is original and refined in Indonesia. South Africa has the largest manganese reserves in the world, but almost all exports to China for treatment. For Cobalt, the largest producer is the Democratic Republic of Congo, but again, it is refined in China. The concerns about monopoly supply, geopolitical instability, human rights violations and environmental damage in these regions have been largely documented.

Although NMC hydroxide represents the smallest fraction (about one percent) of the aspiration outputs, it could always make a bump in future supply chains for battery materials. While Jim Goddin – who sat on the British government’s expertise committee which developed the country’s critical mineral strategy in 2023 – explain, the approach to obtaining supplies from these materials changes.

“The savings examine how they can strengthen supply and diversify supply chains, including collaboration with small producers who potentially offer more stability. The third branch is the circular economy, which ensures that the materials they have are used more or recovered to reuse. ”

The aspirant is not the only company to seek to extract more value from the already mobilized materials. The Canadian company Atlas Materials currently markets a similar process in a closed loop which produces a similar set of products, but the starting point differs – rather than olivine, it focuses on the serpentin.

“My understanding is that on these two raw materials, olivine is in fact the most difficult for acid leachate,” said Fei Wang, assistant professor at Laval University in Quebec. “It therefore means that it needs a higher energy entry and will consume acid faster.” Wang’s research is also focusing on hydrometallurgical extraction of critical metals, but it is not involved in the atlas or aspirant. “There is no doubt that aspiration technology is interesting and represents a step forward, but I have concerns about the economy of it,” he adds.

For Goddin, the conversation should be wider than that. “From a European perspective, things move towards a cleaner and more lasting production. The emphasis is increasingly emphasized on the supply of data on the environmental impacts of materials that are imported and consumed. Even if, let’s say, the suction materials have ended up being more expensive, they can be able to compete on these terrains.