Rockwell Automation supports environmentally friendly lithium production to secure UK supply.
Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), the world’s largest industrial automation and digital transformation company, is collaborating with Cornish Lithium Plc to develop a demonstration plant to validate the sustainable production of lithium hydroxide from micaceous granite.
The Cornish Lithium demonstration plant will be driven by Rockwell Automation’s PlantPAx® distributed control system (DCS). This next-generation system manages control and command operations throughout the plant with an increased level of flexibility that allows for better decisions.
Phil Hadfield, Managing Director of Rockwell Automation in the UK, said:
Rockwell Automation has both the technology and expertise to support the complex lithium extraction process.
We have successfully participated in lithium mining projects around the world, including Australia, Africa and South America. Rockwell Automation’s integrated architecture provides end-to-end integration of systems designed with scalability in mind, taking advantage of new advances in digital technology. »
Cornish Lithium has been licensed for an acid leaching, selective precipitation and crystallization process developed to produce lithium hydroxide from micaceous granite. This process should be more environmentally friendly than the process traditionally used for hard rock, which usually involves a major calcination step, during which the ore is calcined at 1000°C.
The validity of this process has already been tested in a small pilot plant in Australia where it has been shown to produce lithium hydroxide monohydrate salt. The next step will be to build a demonstration plant at the company’s site in Cornwall. This end-to-end design process, from raw material to lithium hydroxide, will use the same equipment as large installations, with one or two modifications being made for reasons of scale.
This simulation of the real process will allow all stakeholders and potential customers to verify the effectiveness of the processing technology on ore mined in Cornwall before starting the construction of a large-scale production facility.
David Moseley, Process Manager for Hard Rock Minerals at Cornish Lithium, said:
Rockwell Automation will play a critical role in the work undertaken.
“We want to simulate as much as possible the control of industrial processes that we could use on a large scale. We make sure to incorporate these elements as much as possible into the demonstration plant, as it is a complex multi-step process, which includes many recycling phases and sequential operation, especially with filtration, where process control is essential.”
“Rockwell Automation implements a process control philosophy based on our instrumentation. It is a series of different process control units whose coordination allows the plant to operate efficiently.”
Two plants will be built: first, a mineral concentration unit where raw ore will be crushed, crushed and separated to create a lithium-enriched mica concentrate; second, a chemical plant, whose hydrometallurgical acid leaching system produces lithium sulphate, which is converted into lithium hydroxide.
This unit combines chemical reactors, precipitators, filtration and crystallization. The demonstration plant is currently under construction and is expected to operate for one year after commissioning.
Rockwell Automation supports environmentally friendly lithium production to secure UK supply, BRUSSELS, April 27, 2023
