American Battery Technology Company Announces Commissioning of First-of-Kind Facility for Manufacturing of Battery Grade Lithium Hydroxide from Nevada Claystone Deposit.
American Battery Technology Company (ABTC) (NASDAQ: ABAT), an integrated critical battery materials company that is commercializing its technologies for both primary battery minerals manufacturing and secondary minerals lithium-ion battery recycling, announced the completion of construction and start of commissioning of its lithium hydroxide (LiOH) pilot plant marking a significant milestone in the commercialization of its internally-developed processes to access an unrealized domestic primary lithium resource.
Ryan Melsert, ABTC CEO, said:
We’re excited to have completed construction of this first-of-kind pilot demonstration system.
“We have already generated thousands of liters of lithium solution from our claystone feedstock material demonstrating our selective lithium liberation technologies.”
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The construction and commissioning of this pilot plant enables ABTC to demonstrate its technologies for accessing the lithium housed in its unconventional resource, Tonopah Lithium Flats Project, in an integrated and continuous system, and to generate large amounts of battery grade lithium hydroxide for delivery to customers for qualifications and evaluation. The construction and operation of this pilot demonstration plant are supported by a competitively awarded grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for this $4.5M effort.
Testing and validation of the lithium hydroxide from the hundreds of tonnes of claystone material processed at this plant will be performed by prospective customers such as automotive OEMs, battery manufacturers, and cathode manufacturers. Over a dozen prospective strategic customers have already toured this pilot facility in recent months, and ABTC is currently evaluating opportunities for the long-term offtake of its battery grade lithium hydroxide.
Lithium products are generally manufactured from conventional resources, which include hard rock spodumene materials primarily from western Australia and lithium-rich brines primarily from South America, however the U.S. does not have large quantities of these developed conventional resources. In order to significantly increase U.S. production of battery grade lithium products, ABTC has been developing its Tonopah Flats Lithium Project (TFLP) with over 10,000 acres of lithium-bearing claystone resource which has been assessed to be one of the largest lithium resources in the U.S.
ABTC plans to further evolve this technology by constructing a commercial-scale 30,000 tonnes lithium hydroxide per year refinery utilizing this system design directly at its TFLP property. In October 2022, ABTC was selected for an additional competitively awarded grant from the U.S. DOE for a $115M project to support the construction of this commercial refinery. ABTC has engaged one of the premier global construction firms, Black & Veatch, for the engineering, procurement, and construction of this commercial-scale lithium hydroxide refinery.
Concurrently, the company is also commercializing its first-of-kind technologies for its battery recycling operations and has successfully manufactured a large inventory of recycled battery metal products at its commercial-scale recycling facility in Storey County, Nevada. ABTC’s internally-developed recycling process utilizes an upfront strategic de-manufacturing process followed by a targeted chemical extraction train in order to recover battery materials with high yields, low cost, and with a low environmental footprint. These ABTC recycling technologies have won several competitive corporate awards and government grants and are fundamentally different than conventional methods of battery recycling, which generally utilize either high temperature smelting operations or non-strategic shredding systems.
Bringing first-of-kind technologies to market, ABTC’s battery recycling and primary battery metals commercialization efforts support the buildout of a domestically-sourced battery metals circular supply chain.
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American Battery Technology Company Announces Commissioning of First-of-Kind Facility for Manufacturing of Battery Grade Lithium Hydroxide from Nevada Claystone Deposit. source
