Australian subsidiary of China's Tianqi Lithium is on track to become the world's largest lithium hydroxide producer as it advances development of its processing plant at Kwinana in Western Australia.
Tianqi Lithium Australia expects to process its first material at the end of this year and produce battery grade lithium hydroxide from next year.
The A$300mn ($234mn) project will double the plant's output to 48,000 t/yr from 2019. This will add value to concentrate produced at the Talison Greenbushes mine, which is a joint venture between Tianqi and US-based Albermarle.
"There is potential for a third stage at our Kwinana project and we are doing feasibility studies on two new plants in China," Phil Thick, general manager of Tianqi Lithium Australia said.
Tianqi's goal is to produce 100,000 t/yr of lithium hydroxide by 2020. Global lithium hydroxide output last year was 200,000 t/yr, almost all of it from China. Demand is expected to rise to 1.0mn t/yr by the early 2020s on growing adoption of electric vehicles and increased demand for battery energy storage applications.
While Western Australia is becoming an increasingly important player in the global lithium supply chain mainly through its hard rock lithium projects, battery grade lithium hydroxide had to be produced before the state could consider broader ambition in the lithium-ion space, he said.
"Everyone is getting excited about building Tesla-type gigafactories in Western Australia – I don't see that happening. We have not yet produced battery grade lithium chemicals. We have to walk before we can run," he said.
Western Australia is ideally suited to hydroxide production as hard rock lithium can be converted directly to hydroxide. Lithium brine produced in South America has to be converted to lithium carbonate before it can be converted to hydroxide.
Neometals' plants and recycling
Another West Australian lithium producer, Neometals has outlined plans to develop a lithium hydroxide plant near Kalgoorlie as well as rolling out mobile lithium-ion battery recycling plants.
Neometals is a 13pc shareholder in the Mt Marion mine which is producing 450,000 t/yr of lithium concentrate, all of which is exported to China for beneficiation. It is developing the Mt Edwards and Mt Holland lithium projects to add to its resource base.
It expects to complete a pre-feasibility study on a lithium hydroxide plant next week and make an investment decision by the end of this year. Construction is earmarked for 2019 and 2020 with first production slated for the first quarter of 2021.
Lithium hydroxide is increasingly preferred for new generation lithium-ion batteries as it enables cathodes to requires less cobalt, which is in tight supply. It takes 7t of spodumene concentrate to produce 1t of lithium hydroxide.
"Less than 5pc of lithium-ion batteries are recycled. There is an opportunity to capture used metals and add value twice. We are designing a plant to recycle lithium-ion battery components such as lithium, copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese," Neometals' chief operating officer Michael Tamlin said.
A completed pilot plant is expected this year with commercialisation of a mobile plant scheduled for next year. The company is looking for a commercialisation partner and will consider licensing the technology for recycling plants globally.
