[MEDIA] …. The company says it has found a way to make lithium...

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The company says it has found a way to make lithium batteries from scratch going from “from brine to battery” in less than 48 hours.
“We’ve taken lithium from four continents around the world and have made it into a pure metal electrode,” co-founder and CEO Emilie Bodoin told MINING.com in an interview. “We’re not that particular about the lithium source because our technology and our end product is very different than what everyone else is doing.”
In July, Pure Lithium won the startup Coup de Coeur Award at the World Materials Forum for its battery-ready lithium metal electrode and received the best new project award at Fastmarkets, competing against several more mature companies. 
Oxy Low Carbon Ventures has invested $15 million in PL, Bodoin said, adding that Canadian firm E3 Lithium has been supplying the company with concentrate for two years.
Vanadium – the game changer

The disruptor in PL’s chemistry, Bodoin says, is vanadium. 
The company pairs its lithium metal anode with a vanadium oxide cathode that was invented by Nobel Prize winner Stan Whittingham, a key figure in the history of Li-ion batteries.
The company’s intellectual property portfolio (73 patents pending) includes a joint patent application with Professor Whittingham, who did the testing to demonstrate the better safety profile, Bodoin said.
“It works, and that’s what we’re using. It’s a simple concept. What we’re doing is so different than any other company,” Bodoin said.

Emilie Bodoin, CEO, PL. Image from LinkedIn
While vanadium, a naturally occurring mineral found in many uranium mines, doesn’t get a lot of attention, it is more abundant than nickel in North America and readily available in the US, which alleviates supply chain clogs.
There are active projects in Nevada – the Gibellini vanadium project, owned by Nevada Vanadium, which in August merged with Flying Nickel Mining, completed the federal permitting process last year for what could be the first primary vanadium mine in the US.
US uranium producer Energy Fuels is also producing commercial levels of high purity vanadium at its White Mesa Mill in Utah……
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