Hi, for a better understanding of the topic, I highly recommend you read this old interview (april 2013) with guy bourassa, ceo of nemaska lithium, who are building a pilot plant to produce lithium hydroxide directly from spodumene ore through electrolysis, without passing by lithium carbonate.
http://investingnews.com/daily/reso...ion-in-quebec-interview-with-nemaska-lithium/
LIN: A common misconception amongst resource investors is that brine deposits are far more economical than hard-rock deposits, but I’ve heard you say otherwise. Can you explain to our investor audience the upside of spodumene over brine?
GB: At first glance, someone might think that because of the natural evaporation process it’s obviously cheaper to obtain lithium from brine; however, natural evaporation is a long process that can take between two and four years to go from deciding you want to produce one tonne of additional material to being able to sell that additional tonne to your client. So, the brines cannot react rapidly to emerging markets or unexpected increases in demand. To give you an example, last year FMC (NYSE:
FMC)) missed its target production by over 52 percent because of inclement weather and technical problems. They don’t know how generous nature has been until the end of the year when they do their harvesting.
When you look at the statistics, between 2009 and 2011, brine producers together had over 70 percent of the overall supply of lithium compound. In two years, they lost 15 percent of their market share to spodumene deposits because they were not ready to increase their capacity of supply. So they forever lost that market share because the hard-rock operations, mainly the Greenbushes operation expansion, were able to rapidly react to the global increase in lithium demand. Obviously a hard-rock mine is not affected by temperature, and at a mine you can rapidly increase production by adding some loaders and crushers, so within, say, six months, you can answer additional demand from your client.
A brine deposit is a live thing, so it’s not as easy as it may seem to harvest the lithium unit. The concentration of lithium in a specific salar varies laterally and in depth, and it moves with the water that flows into the salar. With a spodumene deposit, when you’ve done your drilling, you know it’s not going to move. If the grade is 1.4 percent, it’s going to be 1.4 percent when you extract it, and the contaminants are no different from one meter to another, so it’s a lot easier to do your planning.
All the brines have different chemistries and it’s a very long production process. If you are addressing added demand for battery-grade lithium, then you have to add polishing steps to your production process. So the initial costs associated with getting lithium out of the brine might be lower, but when you need to improve the quality and remove the impurities, then you’re nearing the same price as a spodumene deposit.
If it is that much easier and cost effective to obtain lithium from brines over hard rock, why would Rockwood Lithium (NYSE:
ROC), the second-largest supplier of lithium compound from brine, make an offer to purchase a spodumene deposit from Talison Lithium (TSX:
TLH)? The takeover bid unveiled their understanding of the lithium world: if you want to be a leading supplier, you need to secure a supply that is easy to control, easy to increase and has a constant, known quality of the product.
LIN: The lithium market is highly competitive, with a handful of companies controlling much of global supply. How are you working to position yourself to compete in such a space?
GB: In 2010, we realized that all of the processing facilities for making compounds out of spodumene are concentrated in China, with one single large source of spodumene being Australia. Obviously the market and the clients are looking to geographically diversify their sources, and that’s why we decided to develop our Quebec-based project. We asked ourselves, “what’s the real market?” We decided to enter that really tight market to specifically address the emerging high demand for lithium hydroxide. In order to be competitive with the Chinese we needed to have an advantage over companies in China, in Australia and South America. And the most evident advantage is reliable, low-cost hydroelectricity in Quebec.
We decided to look at ways of making lithium hydroxide directly from spodumene — the conventional method involves making lithium carbonate first and then retransforming that it into lithium hydroxide. We have developed a new, innovative process using membrane electrolysis to make lithium hydroxide directly from the lithium in the spodumene. We have better cost controls for production because we have replaced soda ash as a reagent — which has a highly unpredictable market price — with more stable, long-term priced electricity. So we have a good control on the price of lithium hydroxide production, making our production costs cheaper than most of the producers around the world. That’s how we are positioning ourselves as a world-class leader in the lithium hydroxide market.
LIN: What are the differences between lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate in terms of applications and market demand?
GB: Talking with potential clients, mainly cathode manufacturers, we learned that they prefer to use lithium hydroxide. The new chemistry commercialized in the past years is evolving towards lithium-
iron-phosphate (LFP) cathode material, which has a higher density and a longer life cycle for the same amount of lithium used. I would say the best way of explaining it is if you look through a microscope, the lithium ion obtained in hydroxide is a sphere and the lithium ion in the form of carbonate is a flake with sharp angles. So hydroxide is more suitable for rechargeable batteries because the lithium ions as spheres can more easily move from the cathode to the anode when discharged, and back to the cathode when recharged. The sharp angles of the carbonate tend to break when in motion, shortening the life cycle of the battery. Using lithium in the form of hydroxide increases the life cycle of the battery. Secondly, when you compress all of these ions in a specific volume, it’s easier to fill the gaps between the ions when they are circular than it is when they are sharp, angled plates; that means you have higher density with hydroxide versus carbonate. So the new LFP cathode requires hydroxide and the manufacturers of other cathode chemistries would prefer to use hydroxide if available at the same price as carbonate, which we will be able to provide because we have a lower cost of production.
You may also read this :
http://investingnews.com/daily/reso...-carbonate-lithium-hydroxide-nemaska-lithium/
Lithium carbonate vs. lithium hydroxide
Along with all of the excitement surrounding lithium-ion batteries, lithium hydroxide has also been getting more attention than its counterpart, lithium carbonate. Both are used to produce cathode material for lithium-ion batteries, and hydroxide is more expensive. However, it can also be used to produce cathode material more efficiently and is actually necessary for some types of cathodes, such as
nickel-
cobalt-aluminum oxide (NCA) and nickel-
manganese-cobalt oxide (NMC).
As Jean Francois Magnan, technical manager for
Nemaska Lithium (TSXV:
NMX), explained in a 2014
interview, “because hydroxide decomposes at a lower temperature, it accelerates the process. It uses less heat, less
energy, so you produce more cathode material with less energy, and you can still use the same equipment.”
Certainly, lithium hydroxide is expected to be used in the battery megafactories of the world over lithium carbonate. In recent years, rising demand from the battery space has raised concerns of a
lithium hydroxide shortage. At least two companies — Nemaska, mentioned above, and
Neometals (ASX:
NMT) in Western Australia — are looking to cut out the middleman and produce lithium hydroxide directly from spodumene concentrates.
That might not sound like good news for lithium carbonate, but as mentioned above, the material still has plenty of uses beyond batteries. And since it’s still a precursor to lithium hydroxide in most cases, lithium carbonate could still have a place in the lithium-ion battery supply chain.
