Does the basket match the market?, page-80

Perhaps I know just a little more about spherical graphite than you realize, Utrade. What you are saying about spherical graphite yield is true, up to a point - but it does not consider where the spherical graphite will be used. Big flakes are fine if you want big spheroids. Trouble is, if spherical graphite is to go to batteries (and that is certainly the main target), then the requirement is to get the maximum power per kg of graphite. That, in turn, means that the spheroids need to be as SMALL as practicable. Halving the mean diameter gives roughly four times the surface area per unit of mass. There appears to be a trend towards using progessively smaller spheroids for that reason.

Currently, most batteries use spheroids of mean diameter around 15 - 20 microns. To make a spheroid, they mill a graphite flake until all the edges and corners go, and we are left with a (usually much smaller) potato shape. So to get 20 micron spheroids, they start with flakes of about 100-150 microns diameter, and mill away.

Larger flakes just take longer to mill, and obviously incur greater losses in getting to the desired size of 20 microns. People don't use large flakes to make battery-grade spherical graphite.

And that is why your scenario of large flakes always commanding a premium has a huge question mark hanging over it.

Cheers,

Prime1