Key Success Factors for a Good Project, page-35

There's an unstated assumption in the discussion, which may be leading people up the wrong tree. Graphite from different locations can have dramatically different purification costs. Just because it costs thousands of dollars to purify a tonne of graphite from the Alabama Graphite deposit, does not mean that the same thing is true for everybody else. Syrah, for example, have said that they would need about 2K tonnes of acid to purify 100K tonnes of their product to 99.9% (battery grade). If we assume that means HF (which is the most expensive, currently priced on Alibaba at about US$1k per tonne), this means an acid cost of about $2 per tonne. Throw in the stated treatment handling costs of $20 per tonne, which includes waste disposal, and the net impact on final product cost is small.

As Tobyjack has pointed out, such acid treatment, in conjunction with flotation steps, can be a low-cost way of achieving high purity (given the right starting raw material).

If the final product meets the specifications, contains no acids at that point, and qualifies successfully with the user, what customer company is going to pay a much higher price for a dubiously "greener" material?

Cheers,

Prime1