Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LiCORNE (Lithium recovery and battery-grade materials production from European resources)
Período documentado: 2022-10-01 hasta 2024-03-31
Based on those facts, the current situation looks dramatic in terms of the resilience of the EU on the supply of battery materials. Therefore, securing access to sustainable raw materials is one of the top priorities for the EU to secure its economic future and the green transition. One of the main actions pursued by the EC is to stimulate the production of battery materials, such as Li and other CRMs, by developing sustainable and safe mining, processing, refining, and recycling capacity of raw materials from existing European resources (pegmatites mines, reserves of geothermal Li deposits -brines-, secondary resources such as the waste of the cathode production processes).
In the scope of harvesting the important potential of those primary and secondary resources available in Europe, there is a need to gain the trust of the society by developing environmentally friendly technologies and processes in order to obtain a social license to operate by the different stakeholders involved (industry, citizens, policymakers, etc.). The LiCORNE project is a cornerstone in building this trust, as it focuses on the development of breakthrough, cost-effective, safe and flexible technologies able to operate at improved yield while keeping a very low environmental footprint, and very efficient use of resources.
The LiCORNE project aims to establish the first ever Li supply chain in Europe, increasing the European Li processing and refining capacity for producing battery-grade chemicals from ores, geothermal and continental brines and off-specification cathode materials (waste). Such aim will be achieved by considering 5 main technology stages (Beneficiation → Physico-chemical transformation → Extraction → Separation & Purification → Recovery) involving the investigation of 14 different groundbreaking technologies that have been selected for their potential to operate at low CAPEX and OPEX, low carbon footprint, flexibility and industrial scalability.
- Selecting, characterizing and providing feedstock samples to the R&D partners in the project. All the samples were sent and all the partners are using real samples in their experiments;
- Investigating at lab scale the technical viability in terms of yield and selectivity of Li (and Co and Ni) recovery from the several samples received by the R&D partners by testing the mentioned technologies and optimizing the results towards the achievements of the KPIs established.
In parallel the LCI has been started to be built by collecting information from the processes through ad hoc prepared questionnaires. This tool will allow the environmental (LCA) and economic assessment (LCC) of the technologies and process flowsheet to support the decision of the selection towards the pilot.
Finally, Communication, Dissemination, Exploitation and Management Plans were established, and analysis on the Stakeholder, preliminary market and logistics on possible LICORNE multiple plant locations were performed.