Pilbara Metals Group, Element 25 and Mineral Commodities are among WA businesses awarded millions in federal funding as part of a push to improve Australia’s critical mineral potential.
Three mining technology collaborations involving organisations based in Western Australia have been awarded $3.2 million in funding as part of the seventh round of Cooperative Research Centres Program grants.
Industry, Science and Technology Minister Karen Andrews said the grants were designed to help improve Australia’s critical mineral potential, and the collaborative projects awarded funds in this round were essential for driving innovation and growth across Australia.
“These grants will enable businesses to develop and leverage new technologies, products, processes and services, ensuring Australia can take advantage of new market opportunities,” she said.
A total of $30 million in funding was awarded to 16 projects including three in WA.
Element 25, Pilbara Metals Group and Mineral Commodities were among the WA-based companies awarded funding in this round.
Element 25, Minerals Pty Ltd, Lycopodium, ALS Metallurgy and Murdoch University were awarded $1.3 million to help develop the Butcherbird high-purity manganese project, which will pilot the leaching and purification process of low-grade manganese ores for use in lithium-ion batteries.
Element 25 Managing director Justin Brown told Business News the project had been the company’s main focus since 2017, after a hydrometallurgical flowsheet created with CSIRO pointed towards a price-competitive, cleaner and environmentally sustainable method of extracting energy from ores.
“Traditionally, ore is dug out of the ground and shipped to China for processing,” Mr Brown said.
“We’re seeing we can now process it here and the value can stay in Australia.”
He said the funding would accelerate the development of the project which, if successful, would provide a method for leaching, purifying and creating manganese metal as well as a manganese sulphate for use in lithium ion batteries.
“We’ve obviously been going through several stages of scale up in terms of proving the flowsheet works cost effectively and efficiently, and the final thing we’ll do as part of that is take it through a pilot phase,” Mr Brown said.
“This funding will contribute to that.”
The project will cost $3.9 million.
Pilbara Metals Group, Curtin University and Energy Renaissance were among businesses awarded $1.1 million in CRC-P funding for a manganese sulphate project.
PMG executive director Annette Crabbe said the funding would give the project an internationally competitive position in the lithium-ion battery and manganese specialty chemical industry.
Managing director Rob Mandanici told Business News that, unlike Element 25’s Butcherbird project, PMG’s work would focus entirely on producing manganese sulphate for use in batteries.
“We’re focused on the waste recovery around the process, trying to ensure we utilise everything we can in that value chain and target a zero waste processing stream,” he said.
“Their work is a little different to ours in that we dive straight into producing manganese sulphate and some of the oxide derivatives along the way, whereas their process [includes] electro-manganese metal.”
The project will cost $3.3 million.
Elsewhere in WA, Doral Fused Materials, CSIRO and Mineral Commodities were awarded $812,999 to aid in the development of its commercial-scale process for producing high-purity graphite.
Mineral Commodities investor relations manager Peter Fox told Business News the project would incorporate processes already developed by the CSIRO to look at ways of purifying graphite.
“The graphite concentrate we’re using is the Munglinup graphite that we’re producing from our development asset in Esperance,” Mr Fox said.
“We’re taking concentrate from that project and then we’re looking at a downstream process with the intent to purify that concentrate.”
He said current purification processes could only guarantee total graphitic content of between 96 and 98 per cent, whereas the measure needed to generate battery grade material is at least 99.95 per cent.
If the process were to be perfected, Mr Fox said Mineral Commodities would have a competitive advantage over international competitors that used environmentally harmful hydrofluoric acid processes.
“What we’re seeing with OEMs delivering (electric vehicles) into the market is that there’s no point in producing carbon-neutral projects if you’re going to go and do it out of materials that are derived through harmful processes,” he said.
“It would put us in a wonderful position if we can produce high-purity graphite that doesn’t use fluoride-based free agents.”
The project is currently valued at $2.6 million.
