Altech Chemicals has begun commissioning the wet circuit for its Silumina Anodes pilot plant in Saxony, with work also progressing on the definitive feasibility study for the company’s full-scale facility.
In late 2021, Altech’s managing director Iggy Tan announced the company had “cracked the silicon code” by successfully incorporating its proprietary high-capacity silicon-graphite product Silumina Anodes in lithium-ion batteries.
A feasibility study was revealed in April last year that evaluated building a 10,000 tonne per annum Silumina Anode plant in Saxony, Germany.
The Silumina Anodes are described as achieving a 30% higher energy battery with improved life-span.
“Higher density batteries result in smaller, lighter batteries and substantially less greenhouse gases, and is the future for the electric vehicle market,” Mr Tan explained.
“Due to the attractive economics of the study, a decision has been made by the board to immediately progress to a definitive feasibility study (DFS) for the project.”
“We believe that the production of Silumina Anodes materials could be a game changing technology for the lithium-ion battery industry,” Mr Tan added, saying the company was in a race to get the technology to market as soon as possible.
Pilot plant on schedule
As part of this, development of a pilot plant is on schedule, with the front end’s wet circuit nearing completion and commissioning underway. Aluminium feedstock digestion, which is used in the alumina coating process is expected to be brought online in “subsequent weeks”.
The pilot plant has been installed in an existing building in Dock3 at Schwarze Pumpe, with required building modifications completed in the December quarter.
Meanwhile, fabrication of the pilot plant’s back-end, including coating equipment, dryer and calciner is continuing in South Africa and Europe.
Altech expects final items for the part of the plant will be installed and commissioned by the September quarter of this year.
In addition to plant construction, personnel have been recruited and trained in Germany in readiness for commissioning and the start-up phase.
Once operational, the pilot plant will produce about 120kg a day of Silumina Anodes, which will then be sent to potential end-users for evaluation.
Silumina Anode DFS
In parallel with the pilot plant construction, Altech is advancing the DFS for the commercial 10,000tpa Silumina Anode facility.
ARIKON Infrastruktur was appointed managed the approval process with regulatory bodies, site infrastructure requirements and the remainder of plant design work.
