Queensland battery minerals company Lava Blue will commission its Centre for Predictive Research into Specialty Materials (PRiSM) at Redlands Research Park in early 2023, marking Australia’s latest effort to contribute battery-grade materials to global battery supply chains.
Supported by two federal government grants, PRiSM’s initial purpose will be to produce commercial volumes of battery-grade high purity alumina (HPA), to a purity of at least 99.99%. HPA is the stable material that coats the ‘separator’ between the cathode and anode of a lithium-ion battery, improving battery safety and thermal performance.
Of interest given the current concern about ‘women in STEM’, most of the scientists and engineers researching the crucial HPA processes are women, working at a research lab at Queensland University of Technology called ‘Green Manufacturing and Resource Transformation’.
Headed by Professor Sara Couperthwaite, the lab’s work on battery materials—in partnership with Lava Blue—has attracted a team of nine female scientists and researchers, including other academics, post-doctoral researchers, professional research fellows, PhD candidates, and postgraduate and undergraduates students. They’re drawn to the intellectual challenges presented by renewables technologies, says Couperthwaite, and are passionate about practical innovation that will enable the energy transition.
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“There’s a growing market for HPA, not only in lithium-ion batteries, but in LED lights and sapphire glass,” Couperthwaite says.
“But if Australia is going to be a part of these global, growing industries, it’s not enough to just dig the raw materials out of the ground—we have to be able to refine resources to the purity required, and we have to do it at a scale and price that makes it economically viable.
“Making four-nines HPA from red clay is technically difficult. But proving that it’s possible—as we have done—is only one part of the challenge. You must also develop the processes to do it at scale, with a predictive capability that generates data to de-risk the financial investments required to go to full scale production. And that is another magnitude of complexity.”
In March 2022 the Federal Government included high purity aluminium (HPA) and silicon in its list of 26 critical elements necessary for the energy transition. Lava Blue has been working on methods for production of HPA for the past four years and is a technical leader in Australia, if not in the world, on HPA production from unconventional sources such as kaolin and aluminium rich tailings from refining.
The federal government saw the potential of Lava Blue’s work with research partner QUT, making a $2.9 million grant initially in 2019 via the Innovative Manufacturing CRC, and more recently a $5.2 million grant to expand PRiSM’s capacity and accelerate commercialisation.
The first goal of the PRiSM facility is to make 20kg batches of HPA, starting from 200-250kg of iron-rich Queensland red clay. Twenty kilograms is a major step-up from the laboratory-scale proving of the HPA process in quantities the size of a teacup and the goal is to develop processes that can produce between 4,000kg and 12,000kg per day.
The demand for HPA is growing. Global demand was approximately 2,000 tonnes per annum in 2018, and is expected to be very close to 70,000 tonnes in 2022. HPA demand is forecast to top 280,000 tonnes per annum in 2030.
Couperthwaite says she didn’t set out to build a team of women, but is happy to be a role model.
“My interest in maths and science were triggered first by a female primary school teacher and then a female secondary school teacher – both of them had genuine passion for what they were teaching and I engaged with that passion. I try to do that in my roles—being passionate about chemistry and sustainability, and what can be achieved by science and engineering to improve our world.”
Couperthwaite’s team has a basic goal, and that is to build the technology that supports the energy transition and to find ways in which Australian resources can be used in renewable technologies. That doesn’t just mean making breakthroughs in the lab, but also means ensuring that theoretical rigour can be supported by production, at commercial scale.
“Our goal is not just to make four-nines HPA from kaolin red clay,” sh explains.
“The team has done that. The larger goal is to create technology that can make HPA at scale and build predictive and analytical capabilities to ensure product quality, so other organisations can adopt the technologies and de-risk Australia’s investments in supply lines for critical minerals.
“If women scientists and engineers are attracted to this sort of project it could be because they are allowed to pursue research breakthroughs that are then adopted into the real world where sustainability must also be economically viable.”
Queensland has for many years been tipped as a source for critical minerals supply chains, because of the state’s abundance of the raw minerals that are in demand for the battery and electronics industries. However, the true value of the minerals lies in their refined and processed states.
PRiSM will also identify processes for the recovery of valuable minerals from vanadium pentoxide processing waste, including HPA and, potentially, magnesium and residual vanadium.
Professor Couperthwaite says the method for extracting HPA from kaolin—which in north Queensland can have 19% iron in the clay—includes several high-precision processes to ensure product quality and to overcome challenges associated with the management of highly corrosive hydrochloric acid during the processing stages.
“When you’re working with hydrochloric acid at high temperature you’re limited by the materials of construction for scale-up while also maintaining product quality. It has been a real challenge to create a process in which we achieve safe, predictable results at an economic scale.”
She says the hydrochloric acid process method was invented in the 1940s but was limited by the technology and materials available. “The breakthrough was the integration of real-time monitoring with a range of sensor networks and machine learning that give the required knowledge and control of the chemical processes. It worked in a lab with tiny amounts using laboratory glassware – but you can’t scale the laboratory glass equipment. PRISM has been designed to trial the materials of construction and vessel designs that can be scaled.
“HPA must have specific material properties and purity to allow ions to move between the cathode and anode, and it must be inert, so side reactions don’t occur,” Couperthwaite says.
“Impurities in HPA have the potential to form dendrites that will lead to a short-circuit and battery fires.”
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The PRiSM processing line employs real-time sensors, smart materials and machine-learning analytics to develop high resolution control of the processes. Some of the plant has been bought overseas while other pieces had to be fabricated for PRiSM on a bespoke basis. The facility also requires a highly skilled workforce, in a market which has a shortage of chemical and process engineers, chemists, and metallurgists.
Couperthwaite started her post-university career in the mining sector which has made her aware of the need for practical, focused science. It also showed her that commercially driven scientific work in the resources sector can have a sustainability outcome.
“PRiSM is core to a triangular collaboration between Lava Blue, QUT and Stantec. Lava Blue brings the vision, capital and resources, QUT does the fundamental science and engineering, and Stantec develops the engineering design for PRiSM to demonstrate the process. This ensures HPA can be made from a first-principles approach, to optimise the process, while de-risking the technological challenges to replicating it at scale.
“We are now starting to expand into Europe to build mutually beneficial partnerships that help us secure supply lines for materials and manufacturing capabilities of lithium-ion battery.”
