Novel graphite purification

Finally, something to read on the novel graphite purification process Hazer have developed in-house - small-scale at present. They submitted this patent application on June 8: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2023097376

There's a lot of detail, so here's just a few highlights (high-level):

[002] In its most preferred form, the present invention specifically relates to a process for purifying graphite produced via the Hazer® Process, which produces iron-containing graphite of specific and selectable morphologies. However, it will be appreciated that the invention is not limited to this particular, most preferred field of use.

[0011] The Hazer® Process has been shown to produce graphitic carbon with total graphitic carbon (TGC) of 70 to 97% w/w directly from the reactor. To appeal the high-end market of graphite applications, such as battery manufacturing, graphite purity of 99.9 % or higher is required.

[0022] It is an object of a preferred form of the present invention to provide a process which can purify graphite having a high degree of purity (i.e., greater than 90% and even greater than 99%).

[0023] It is an object of at least one preferred form of the present invention to provide a process which can purify graphite without affecting the morphology or degrading the graphite.

[0025] The present invention relates generally to a process for increasing the purity of Hazer graphite from 50% to 99.9% (by weight), preferably 80% to 99.7% by electrochemically extracting the iron impurity. As an additional advantage, it may be possible to recover the iron impurity as a high purity catalyst for the Hazer® Process.

[0054] The present Inventors have surprisingly found a novel, facile approach for the purification of graphite at relatively low cost. The electrochemical processes employed (an electrolytic cell or electrorefining), due to their simple operation give rise to a surprisingly-efficient relatively low-cost process for the purification of graphite.

@sewell64, you recently asked if graphene is still among the morphologies: yes, it's confirmed as being single/multi-layer sheets as before.

No shortage of innovation here. A very solid team.