Crystallization Process to Yield Battery Grade Lithium

Pharmaceutical and battery material supply chains share three challenges: materials must be supplied in high quantity (>kiloton-scale), with high batch-to-batch consistency, and in high (>99%) purity. Pharmaceutical companies address these challenges using in-situ reaction monitoring, continuous crystallization, and automated high-throughput experimentation. Incorporating automation and reaction monitoring at the lab scale shortens the timeline to scale up and reduces uncertainty when the plant is commissioned.

Despite the advantages, the mining industry rarely uses lab-scale process automation. Plant designers rely on simple thermodynamic models and few manually executed tests to design large-scale plants. Telescope Innovations aims to bridge the gap between these industries by developing lab-scale automation technologies for the mining industry. Their focus is on processes to yield high-quality battery raw materials (i.e., lithium, nickel-cobalt, and manganese salts) from low-quality feed streams and recycled material. Automation and analytical technologies are poised to dramatically facilitate access to battery materials at huge scales, paving the way for a sustainable energy future.