While global production of lithium has grown to meet
climbing demand in recent years, the issues of exactly
where the metal is mined and processed for batteries
internationally – and how it can be recycled when
batteries reach the end of their life – have
become strategic. Owing to large-scale development plans in
the EV industry, there are also questions about whether
lithium production will be sufficient to meet future demand
within the next four to seven years.
Such considerations have encouraged development of
minerals processing and lithium battery-grade chemicals
production at the Cinovec project in the Czech Republic.
Towards the end of September, SMS group announced that it
had been appointed by Geomet, a joint venture between
Australian mineral exploration and development company
European Metals and Czech energy giant CEZ, as the lead
engineer for the project. The Germany-based international
plantmaker will supply front-end engineering design (FEED)
for what it says will be Europe’s first
lithium battery chemicals facility.
The new facility is set to produce about 22,500 tons of
lithium carbonate or about 25,000 tons of lithium hydroxide
per year (both of battery grade), as well as tin and
tungsten concentrates from a by-products recovery circuit.
SMS group will provide the process and plant technology for
the complete process chain: from ore comminution, via
logistics for concentrate handling, up to and including the
extractive metallurgy processes (see graphic of plant
layout).
Under the FEED agreement, SMS group will provide full
process integration, from the point of delivery of ore to
the underground crusher, through to the delivery of
finished battery-grade lithium chemicals for battery and
cathode manufacturers. This encompasses comminution,
beneficiation, roasting, leaching and purification as well
as the lithium process flowsheet and the tin/tungsten
recovery circuit delivering metal concentrates to
refineries.
The aim of the FEED is to deliver a binding fixed-price
lump-sum turnkey Engineering, procurement, and construction
(EPC) contract with associated process guarantee and
product specification guarantees for battery-grade lithium
chemicals.
Predicting the need
"In the last few years, we have gained a strong position
within the fast-growing segment of technological metals,
including those for battery production," said Herbert
Weissenbaeck, SMS group vice president for strategic
project development, at the time of signing the
contract.
SMS group notes that there is good reason to believe
there will be increasing lithium project activity within
Europe. "Given the situation that in Europe lithium ion
battery production capacities equating to about 200 GWh per
year are being planned or are currently under construction,
and the fact that about 800 t of lithium carbonate are
needed to produce one gigawatt hour of battery capacity,
the production volume planned by Geomet in the first phase
of the project will only cover a small portion of the
medium-term demand generated in Europe," it highlighted in
a press release.
The company believes that the FEED contract appointment,
at what it says is Europe’s largest hard-rock
lithium resource, will put the company at the forefront of
this developing industry. SMS group also stated:
"Especially, as we see that off-the-shelf metallurgical
processes are becoming increasingly inadequate for the
extraction of valuable metals from non-conventional ores at
reasonable costs and with a minimum ecological footprint,
we can count on our broad-based portfolio of technologies
and our extensive know-how in both pyro and
hydrometallurgy, offering our customers in the
technological metals sector optimized, integrated
solutions."
Weissenbaeck explained further. "Around 15 years ago we
started looking at the potential for growth in
metallurgical plants and our volume of business and we
figured out even back then that it was becoming obvious
that growth in steel metallurgical plants would be slower
than for new technology metals that go into products for an
electrified future – like lithium, vanadium,
nickel and cobalt," he told Metal Market
Magazine.
"Of course we supply blast furnaces and casters and
rolling mills and other metals-making and forming
equipment, but we have also always had a strong portfolio
of processing lines, which involve quite a lot of
sophisticated chemistry," he added. "Descaling of carbon
steel and stainless steels requires the recovery of acids
and the various caustics involved. In the chemistry
department, we realised that metals like lithium would
develop strong economic demand and that we had quite a lot
of processing steps suitable for their extraction from
complex ores in our toolbox."
He said that, performed in the right sequence, some of
those processing steps are very suitable for implementing
production routes for lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide,
vanadium pentoxide and vanadium electrolytes.
SMS group opened its hydrometallurgical laboratory in
Vienna in 2008. "We started out small just with
metallurgical test work, mainly to complement process
developments around our main lines of business, but now we
are increasingly dealing with numerous non-conventional
sources of battery and technology materials as the easy to
mine and to process ores, such as for example nickel
sulfates, are running out and that more complex sources,
that require bespoke, environmentally friendly and
energy-efficient processing solutions, such as –
to stay with the same example – nickel laterites
are receiving increasing attention."
He reminded that conventional sources of nickel are the
nickel sulfates found in the northern hemisphere, such as
the major deposits of Norilsk, or at Sudbury, in Canada.
"Nickel sulfate processing more often than not entails a
significant sulfur dioxide footprint, and so permitting
[for processing] in the Western world is quite a
challenge," he added.
He pointed to plentiful resources of laterites in the
tropics as the likely main future sources of nickel, but
added that the incumbent processing methods for those ores
are rather capex and opex intensive. "So the industry was
spending quite a lot of money on researching new routes for
that and this was one of the entry points for us as a
hydrometallurgical laboratory for test and development work
on new hydrometallurgical routes for the extraction of
nickel and cobalt concentrates from those sources,"
Weissenbaeck explained.
Over time those activities increased. SMS group signed a
contract two years ago with Altech Chemicals, which
produces high-purity alumina, driven by the battery
industry, which is in high demand as a coating material for
the separator foils in lithium-ion batteries. Weissenbaeck
noted that an alumina coating is applied to those separator
foils as a precaution against battery fires as well as to
inhibit battery charging-depth degradation. "There is an
increasing demand for that and, together with Altech, we
did a FEED study for an integrated HPA plant and –
based on that – we signed a turnkey fixed-price
EPC contract for US$280 million to be executed on their
site in Johor Bahru, Malaysia," he highlighted.
"Now the 'lithium train’ is leaving the
station and accelerating, and here in Europe especially,"
said Weissenbaeck. "The European governments have a
tendency towards becoming autonomous when it comes to the
supply of battery materials," he added.
He is consequently confident that the FEED deal with
Geomet in the CEZ / European Metals joint venture will not
be the last one.
"There are other countries that want to have their
own lithium battery chemicals facilities to fuel the
growing number of battery-gigafactories. We are
participating in this trend and are anticipating having the
edge over others, especially here in Europe," he said,
adding that, as a supplier that has invested in getting its
toolbox and processing steps lined up in order to master
the underlying processing challenges, SMS group sees itself
as very well positioned.
Compact timeframe
There are 14 months to complete the FEED project for the
Cinovec project, but then what will the timeframe be to
start building the commercial plant to process ore from
that mine if all goes to plan?
"In projects of this nature, the length of the local
permitting processes is more often than not becoming the
main determinant for the project timeline," said
Weissenbaeck. "Apart from that, the execution time for this
particular project, depending on the chosen execution
strategy and structure, is not expected to differ much from
what one would expect for a greenfield medium-size
processing plant complex in a location with substantial
existing industrial infrastructure, such as the
infrastructure at Cinovec."
How will SMS group organize its project team from across
the diverse range of engineers and technologists in the
company? "We will put together all the people who are
willing and able to work on this project – that is
very important," said chief technology officer Hans Ferkel.
"Because sometimes if you want to have a big change in a
company, you need people who are willing to change and
interested in it.
If you ask, then you will find people in the company who
are willing and you can educate people, who may not be the
absolute experts on something but, if they are willing to
do it, they can learn it quickly, building not only on the
distinct DNA of an engineering company with a strong track
record in disruptive innovation, but also on the
substantial groundwork already completed by European Metals
over the last 5 years," he stressed. The FEED project team
is expected to exceed 100 people.
Alpha and omega
In addition to expanding its in-house expertise in ore
processing technology, the company is also investing in
technologies for the other end of the battery supply chain,
having recently acquired a stake in lithium-ion battery
recycler Primobius GmbH.
"We talk a lot about the ingredients you need to make
batteries to drag out of the earth to the manufacturers of
these kinds of batteries, but still then you have to close
the loop," said Ferkel. "That is the reason that we have
formed this 50:50 joint venture with Neometals called
Primobius," he explained.
The Primobius recycling process targets the recovery of
valuable materials from consumer electronic batteries,
including devices with lithium cobalt oxide cathodes and
nickel-rich electric vehicle and stationary storage battery
chemistries (with
lithium‐nickel-manganese‐cobalt cathodes).
Primobius notes that its technology supports multiple
chemistries and formats, sometimes without prior
discharging of the batteries. A wet shredding process is
used to reduce the risk of fire hazard and a combined
off-gas system with filtering and wet scrubbing is used to
remove volatile organic compounds and dust.
"We are trying to use a hydrometallurgical approach to
recycle all the most important ingredients out of these
materials. We first shred the batteries and then we have
finally the black mass, containing the most valuable
elements – for example cobalt, manganese, carbon
and lithium – and this needs to be recycled at a
very high level of perhaps 90% or more because this is very
efficient and then we can close the loop," Ferkel
added.
Having undertaken laboratory-scale testing, the company
is now building a 1,000 tpy pilot plant in Germany at the
site of the group’s foundation and major
engineering workshops in Hilchenbach, which will start
operation next year. It will take, "all batteries coming
out of the field, or ones that have been rejected during
manufacture because of some quality problems, which also
have to be recycled," said Ferkel. Its output will be the
ingredients needed to make new batteries.
If the technology scales up successfully, Ferkel said
that a commercial-scale recycling plant with a capacity of
20,000 tpy of battery input or more is envisaged. "In the
intermediate step we can really test all these things," he
added.
According to Primobius, it is likely that over 15
million tonnes of lithium-ion batteries could be discarded
globally from 2020-30, so the need for technologies to
recycle them is ever more pressing and in an increasing
number of nations recycling is mandatory.
Funding the future
For speed in a competitive arena, the battery recycling
project partners have found the money to fund the pilot
project from their own resources. "For the battery
recycling, we are doing everything on our own, to be quick
and keep the key know-how in the company and own the
intellectual property needed ultimately to earn money,"
Ferkel explained.
Later on, for a commercial-scale plant, decisions will
be made on when and whether to involve partners to source
funding for larger scale projects.
The timeframe for the Primobius pilot is set. "We will
start next year. We want to test all the batteries and get
the products out of it and then deliver those to potential
customers for these types of chemicals in order to make new
batteries. So we want to have this done next year," Ferkel
concluded.
Slovakian battery manufacturer InoBat Auto offers the
latest developments in lithium-ion battery cells to a range
of markets and applications. The company recently entered
into a memorandum of understanding with Primobius that
provides an evaluation framework towards a potential
Primobius-Inobat cooperation to operate a commercial
lithium-ion battery recycling facility in Eastern Europe.
InoBat is building a 'gigafactory’ and it is
anticipated that the company will produce 50,000 tons per
year of new batteries after its full commercial start
(expected in 2024).
Reinventing SMS group
While SMS group has a long-established range of plant
and technologies, including meltshops, steel and
non-ferrous rolling mills, processing lines, and forging
and extrusion equipment for international markets that it
continues to serve, it is also consciously diversifying its
activities to supply rapidly emerging markets, such as the
battery metals projects described in the main article, plus
scandium, niobium, silicon and various rare
earths.
Demand for metals that have historically been more or
less the captive by-products of the production of other
metals – sometimes used as the definition of a
minor metal – has catalysed the development of
processes and technologies to enable their production from
unconventional sources or via advanced recycling schemes,
and sometimes both.
It is the potential growth in demand for equipment
needed for those new markets that has stimulated SMS
group’s diversification and a degree of
reinvention. While the smelting, rolling and finishing of
industrial metals like steel and aluminium remain core
parts of the company’s portfolio,
pyrohydrolysis, hydrolytic distillation, oxidative
precipitation and fluidised bed technology, together with
other techniques of extractive metallurgy, have become an
extended part of the company’s range in recent
years.
In addition to the example of the project with Altech on
high-purity alumina (see main article), Australian mining
corporation TNG Limited, based in Perth, Australia, and SMS
group plan to implement a process enabling the production
of CO2-neutral hydrogen as the Mount Peake
titanium/vanadium/iron project is developed in the Northern
Territory of Australia. The hydrogen produced will be used
as a reducing agent to make the production of titanium,
vanadium and iron from fine-grained titanomagnetite
concentrate carbon-neutral.
Under the umbrella of its New Horizons programme, many
other projects are under way that are also not connected
directly with the group’s traditional core
business.
Additive manufacturing
"For example, powder metallurgy [and 3D printing] are not
in our core business yet," said Ferkel, but the company has
already made significant in-roads into that area. "We sold
a metal-powder atomization plant to Outokumpu as equipment
as a service and we are also looking to our own plants that
we are selling to see where we can use 3D printed parts,"
he added.
The atomization plant for Outokumpu – scheduled
to become operational in early 2022 – will be
designed for an annual production of up to 330 tons of
stainless steel powder. It is also a first for SMS group in
being the first ever facility that the company is supplying
under a subscription contract.
One of the established advantages of additive
manufacturing is its ability to make parts that can be
designed on a computer with advanced design software, but
which are impossible to actually make by using conventional
machining techniques. "Some things are not possible if you
try to produce it by conventional drilling or cutting, so
you have to produce it by a flow model or similar," Ferkel
elaborated. "It can be nice looking, but then no-one can
produce it. With 3D printing, you can produce such parts
and that is also something we can use in our plant at
different sites," he added.
A manufacturer of high-alloy forgings, Gustav Grimm
Edelstahlwerk GmbH & CO. KG, based in Remscheid,
Germany, started running a 31.5/34-MN high-speed open-die
forging press supplied by SMS group earlier this year (see
photo). For the first time, the plantmaker installed an
additively manufactured machine component in an open-die
forging press. Made from aluminium alloy, the 3D-printed
hydraulic manifold block is much lighter and more compact
than one conventionally made from steel, and has a
flow-optimized design.
Changing mindset
Introducing such new technologies and concepts into SMS
group – a company with a mechanical engineering
heritage stretching back well over a century – can
raise challenges.
"That is another reason why you need an
interdisciplinary team because sometimes, also, you need
someone to sign for it that this component will work and
then you must be sure," said Ferkel. "If you confront
someone with perhaps 30 years on normal technology of
manufacturing things, then to change this guy to be able to
think in a 3D-printed manner – that needs some
time. So you always need this mix of young, open-minded
people that challenge the more experienced people and
finally something useful comes out," he explained.
Ferkel described the site of one of SMS
group’s major workshops, at Hilchenbach in
Germany, where the 1,000 tpy pilot lithium-ion battery
recycling plant described in the main article is being
built, as the "cradle of the SMS group." He said that it
also shows how the SMS group is able to reinvent itself
again and is also able to change: "It is not just a
physical change but a mindset change," he concluded.
