The challenge
Australia’s graphite opportunity, and the manufacturing gap
Australia has significant graphite resources, estimated at 7.14 Megaton, with an approximate market value of USD 1.08 billion.
Despite this strong resource base, our country currently lacks industrial-scale capacity to manufacture graphite anode materials, the dominant active anode material in lithium-ion batteries.
Our response
Developing a pathway to battery-ready graphite materials
To address this gap, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Future Battery Industries CRC, has developed and demonstrated a viable process for converting natural graphite flakes into spherical anode active materials using the NARA Impact Blender.
The NARA NHS-0 and NHS-1 are research-scale solid-state impact blenders, used for scaling to research volumes and fine-tuning parameter setting for scale up. They can process up to 400g batches, around 20kg per day.
The results
Delivering higher yields and higher-capacity battery materials
The process achieved production yields of 76%, significantly higher than the 30-50% typically achieved by current commercial methods.
Pilot-scale production of 9-10 kg using CSIRO developed process parameters was also successfully demonstrated at NARA Machinery Co. Ltd. in Japan, highlighting the process's strong potential for commercial scale-up.
Additionally, using the NARA impact blender, CSIRO has also developed hybridised natural graphite & silicon composite powders as active anode materials, increasing battery capacity by 2 - 3 times.