Mr. Faizaan Lalani reports

MEDARO TO EXPLORE EXTENSION OF ITS SPODUMENE PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY TO INCLUDE PRODUCTION OF LITHIUM METAL

Medaro Mining Corp. has launched an initiative to extract lithium from spodumene concentrates for the express purpose of producing lithium metal.

The prime motivation behind the new work is the recognition that, in the lithium battery industry, there is a growing trend toward solid-state lithium batteries as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries -- and in the development of solid-state lithium batteries an option under intense investigation is the use of a lithium metal anode to increase battery energy density, accelerate charging rates and extend battery life. These enhancements, if realized at commercial scales, would result in longer electric vehicle driving ranges and less time required for battery recharging. Moreover, longer battery-pack lifespans would lower maintenance costs, and also reduce the frequency of battery-pack replacements, further enhancing the benefits of EV ownership.

In the EV battery industry, some experts -- for example, Zhang et al. (2020) (1) -- now believe that demand for high-purity metallic lithium will accelerate rapidly in coming years, an occurrence that would create the need to increase the global production of lithium metal from what it is currently, just a few thousand tonnes per year, to what it would have to become to meet the heightened demand, nearly one million tonnes per year. At the same time, to facilitate this anticipated dramatic change, it would be important to lower the costs of manufacturing lithium metal.

It has already been shown that the Medaro spodumene processing technology is highly effective at extracting lithium from beta-spodumene and subsequently converting it to high-purity lithium carbonate. In addition, it has long been known that lithium carbonate can be processed to produce lithium hydroxide monohydrate, at scale, using one of several different proven methods. Therefore, if Medaro is successful in expanding its spodumene processing procedures to include the option of forming lithium metal, this would create a single technological umbrella under which lithium sourced from spodumene concentrate could be used to manufacture any desired proportion of lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide monohydrate and lithium metal.

(1) Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2020, 8, 22455-22466.

About the company

The company is a lithium exploration company based in Vancouver, B.C., and holds options over the Darlin, Rapide, Pontax, Lac La Motte and CYR South lithium properties in Quebec and the Yurichson uranium property in the Athabasca basin in Saskatchewan. The company is a party to a joint venture agreement that engages the company in the development and commercialization of a new process to extract lithium from spodumene concentrate.

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