@Scarpa Thanks you for your detailed post and wishes. The technical details you have given are great. What I was doing for last 4 year was to interpret that data in plain language here.
When we said "not all lithium is equal" we know that the high amount of impurities in the produced spodumene concentrate in mines have a great negative role in the processing stage of chemical converters (refineries of lithium carbonate or hydroxide) of that spod concentrate feed.
Also we talked long time ago that when the converter changes the spod supplier they get different spec of spod concentrate and the process machines adjusted to the previous spod feed type having problems. So the downtime time is being longer and recovery rate goes down.
Anyway there is a lot to talk about those technical issues. As you may know the reason I didn't prefer to have PLS shareholding was technical issues. Otherwise PLS has a huge resource but technical specs are not that good, and can't compete with higher grade low impurity producers like Greenbushes, LTR and Covalent (WES/SQM) when the hard competition times hit. Same negativity is valid for ALB/MIN's Wodgina project too.
I want to more focused on lithium supply/demand, battery and EV sales issues from now on. That's what matter for us.
@Sometime, You asked "You say that the lepidolite product is of a low quality, could it be the reason behind the battery fires that are being reported?"
No we can't say that directly, but it's af course in the game of the reasons behind those fires. The fires might be caused by many other things related to the battery system in those BYD cars. I watched that vidoe too.
First of all yes the ratio of impurities in lithium carbonate used in those batteries is very important. When they say 99.5% lithium carbonate, the remaining 0.05% is being impurities. And those impurities may dendrite grow in the battery cells, and they might be the main cause of fire.
(A dendrite in metallurgy is a characteristic tree-like structure of crystals growing as molten metal solidifies, the shape produced by faster growth along energetically favourable crystallographic directions.Dendrites are basically whiskers of lithium that grow inside batteries, and can cause the devices they’re powering to lost power more quickly, short out, or in some instances, catch fire.)
99.5% is the highest purity can be achieved for lithium carbonate. Lithium hydroxide purity can go up to 99.8%. That 0.02% makes very difference in the battery chemistry and safety.
Dendrites are the biggest problem of solid state batteries. That why the SS batteries could not be commercialised so far even though many companies are working to fix that problem for long years. It is not expected to be the SSBs can be on the market before 2025. (There is more lithium in it because the anode is pure lithium metal instead of graphite).
When it comes back to fire issue, firstly for producing high quality lithium battery you have to use high quality lithium carbonate or hydroxide. When we say 99.5% purity lithium carbonate we also need know what type of impurities in that 0.05%! As @Scarpa explained, is there high amount of iron, or phosphorus, or fluorine in it!
You can see on my previous post, the Chinese sells the lithium hydroxide to Japan at $99,000/t. Why the Japs pay that much price? I think because they give the specs of what they want and they exactly get it. (I love Japs quality control passion).
LTR Price at posting:
$2.72 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)