Federal research and development

Contact
Dr. Yves Thibault (CanmetMINING)

Government collaborators
Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan); Energy, Mining and Environment, National Research Council (NRC)

Project summary: Li-Cs-Ta pegmatites in Canada represent the most important mineral-based source of Li, where refractory aluminosilicates (alpha-spodumene, petalite) are the main carrier phases. Highly energy-intensive approaches to recover Li from these minerals involve an initial heat treatment exceeding 1,000 °C to induce a phase transition that will promote Li exchange during a second acid-baking stage (approximately 250 °C). A recent investigation identified factors of crystal properties that can drastically enhance Li exchange at much lower temperature. This creates an opportunity for developing an energy-efficient Li aluminosilicates decomposition process without the conventional initial heat-treatment step.

Project objectives: To optimize and adapt this innovative single-stage approach to concentrates from Li-Cs-Ta pegmatites and, in collaboration with our industrial partner, explore opportunities for integration into a more developed and exhaustive flowsheet. Research also focuses on identifying upfront refinement strategies to increase purity of the Li pregnant leach solution (PLS) toward the production of the required battery precursors. The potential of this novel refractory Li minerals decomposition process will significantly reduce energy consumption and have a significant impact in de-risking the extraction flowsheet for pegmatite-based Li projects in Canada.

Project lead/Contacts
Dr. Tony Di Feo, Lead (CanmetMINING); Dr. Maziar Sauber (CanmetMINING); Dr. Shahrokh Shahsavari (CanmetMINING)

Government collaborators
CanmetMATERIALS, National Research Council

Project summary: This project aims to develop alternative processes for the production of Li from Canadian resources. The process development studies required for each resource vary in scope and mostly depend on available background mineralogical and process development studies. They all share challenges related to spodumene (transformation phase, Li recovery, parameters, etc.), waste rock management, controlling final concentrate quality, increasing the grade and recovery, and the rejection of iron-bearing minerals.

Contact
Chae-Ho Yim (National Research Council [NRC])

Project summary: According to the United States Geological Survey, over 55% of the world’s mined nickel is for the stainless steel industry, with only 10% for a chemical product. This has created an intermediate bottleneck in the supply chain for electric vehicle (EV) adoption as most lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) preferred in North America are high-nickel content cathodes. NRC is proposing an integrated approach through which new cathode chemistry based on Ni-Fe is developed and derived from converted nickel pig iron (NPI) or ferronickel into an intermediate product for cathode precursors.

Project objectives: To find the feasibility of the NPI or ferronickel ore for battery material production and to find the critical impurities that affect the material synthesis, and to design lab-scale experiments to synthesize battery materials.

Contact
Dr. Marc Duchesne (CanmetENERGY)

Government collaborator
National Research Council

Project summary: The purification of graphite has proven to be a bottleneck for the graphite value chain in Canada. Despite Canada’s richness in graphite resources and growing global demand, progress has stalled due to real or perceived environmental burdens associated with the purification, and limited technical know-how.

An initial techno-economic assessment and life cycle assessment completed by NRCan and its partners indicates electro-thermal purification of graphite to more than 99.9% in a fluidized bed can be valuable and have minimal environmental burdens.

This project will provide technical know-how, via publications and stakeholder engagement, based on experiments with a fluidized bed, supported by modelling and purified graphite characterization. Reliable economic and environmental assessments will also be produced to support decisions in policy, regulations and investment.

Project objectives: To spur additional investment into clean graphite purification in Canada, particularly for the piloting of a fluidized bed electro-thermal purification system, to get green graphite to market.

Contact
Dr. Konstantin Volchek (CanmetMINING), Matthew Hudder (CanmetMINING)

Government collaborators
National Research Council (NRC), Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), CanmetENERGY

Project summary: Advancing technologies to economically recover lithium from large volumes of water at low concentrations is a significant challenge to the increased Li production in Canada.

Project objectives: To address this issue by identifying promising Canadian Li brine reserves and developing novel separation technologies to enhance Li recovery, with an emphasis on brine from geothermal and petroleum-based applications.

Project participants (CanmetENERGY, CanmetMINING, GSC and NRC) will perform feasibility studies using sourced brine samples to evaluate the performance of technologies within direct Li extraction flowsheets.

Research will reduce energy demand, lower the complexity and enhance Li separation when compared to existing processes. A techno-economic analysis will be performed and weighed against experimental results. This will help develop an optimized flowsheet and demonstrate economic viability of a commercial scale operation.

Identified synergies include integration with Alberta’s geothermal resources to provide both a green technology solution and added-value production via surplus energy generation.

Results of the feasibility studies will be reviewed by CanmetMINING and the most promising technologies selected for integration in an optimized process. This project will address some of the most significant barriers to increased Li production from brine sources (i.e., access to capital for the development of novel technologies, development of processes in pre-commercial stages and the development of robust critical mineral process chains).

Contact
Dr. Jason Hattrick-Simpers (CanmetMATERIALS)

Project summary: Available conventional processes for upgrading Li carbonate to battery grade product are complex and formation of pure Li carbonate crystals is challenging. This means multiple iterations of the refinement are needed, resulting in significant processing cost.

Professor Jason Hein of UBC has created a novel brine extraction technology coupled with a first-in-class direct Li carbonate crystallization process capable of producing battery grade (>99.95% purity) Li carbonate from specific groundwater brine that emerged from a three-year proof of concept exercise. This resulted in an operational large-scale pilot plant in the United States.

This successfully demonstrated concept provides a template for a potentially generic new technology, which could be adapted to nearly any Li feedstock, with initial focus on specific Canadian sources oilfield brines as well as effluent water from battery recycling operations.

Project objectives: To create fit-to-purpose solutions for Li recovery and refinement, which will be capable of delivering >99.95% purity material in capital expenditures and operating expenditures and having an environmental impact superior to existing facilities. Promising solutions will be tested for commercialization.

Contact
Dr. Babak Shalchi Amirkhiz (CanmetMATERIALS)

Project summary: At the end of their life, lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) can be recycled using pyro-metallurgical processes where only heavy metals including cobalt (Co), nickel (Ni) and manganese (Mn) are recovered. During this process, heat usually burns away plastics, lithium (Li) salts and graphite. The graphite is valued at approximately $10,000/tonne and normally becomes a fuel. The introduction of newer, circular practices (e.g., hydrometallurgy) offers the potential to recover graphite from anodes.

Project objectives: To establish methodology for recycling graphite and upgrade to 99.95% purity from spent LiBs by using pyro- and hydro-metallurgical processes that will also develop a methodology for quick and reliable assessment of the recycled graphite suitability for reuse in LiBs.

Contact
Dr. Régis Chenitz (National Research Council)

Project summary: Despite the anticipated supply issues for graphite — the primary component of battery anodes — there is little effort to recycle this critical mineral.

Project objectives: The development of a graphite recycling process that is industrially scalable and can play a significant role in future production of critical minerals in Canada. Project components: a study of the extraction of graphite from black mass or leach residue of spent battery electrodes; the examination of the extraction processes impact on graphite chemistry and morphology; and the investigation of various mechanical, thermal and chemical treatments to restore graphite electrochemical properties. The project will focus on approaches that are easily scalable and directly transferable to the commercial sector. This will be the first medium-scale demonstration of graphite recycling in Canada, opening up new opportunities for Canadian businesses to develop this important part of the battery value chain.

Contact
Dr. Rory Cameron (CanmetMINING)

Government collaborator
National Research Council

Project summary: Pyrrhotite-rich tailings in Sudbury, Ontario, are estimated to contain $8 to 10 billion in recoverable Ni; processing this material could be a significant new source of Ni- and Co-sulphate salts that could be used to help establish an EV battery manufacturing supply chain in Canada. Previous work at CanmetMINING has demonstrated that it is technically feasible to extract the Ni and Co using bacterial leaching technology. A scoping level techno-economic assessment has been used to identify the major cost drivers in capital expenditures and operating expenditures (CAPEX/OPEX). This project will directly address those major cost drivers to reduce CAPEX/OPEX and improve the process economics; through the modification of the process conditions, new process residue in backfill can be used and performance of the microbial culture enhanced by using advanced genomic techniques.

Project lead/Contacts
Dr. Tony Di Feo, Lead (CanmetMINING); Dr. Maziar Sauber (CanmetMINING); Dr. Shahrokh Shahsavari (CanmetMINING)

Government collaborators
National Research Council; Industry, Tourism and Investment at the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT)

Project summary: The Cantung mine is a world-class tungsten mine that went into bankruptcy due to depressed commodity prices. The site is now part of partnership between Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and the GNWT to reactivate the mine and ensure that the site is effectively remediated. This project examines how to reprocess the tailings which currently sit in tailings ponds in the headwaters of a major river flowing into a national park in a seismically active region.

Project objectives: To develop reprocessing options to alleviate the environmental and operating challenges for the re-commissioning of the Cantung mine.

This project will produce a technically feasible flowsheet along with a techno-economic analysis.

Contact
Julie Deriaz (CanmetMINING)

Government collaborator
Geological Survey of Canada

Project summary: Major gaps exist in characterization of the potential value contained within mine tailings in Canada. This project will develop a comprehensive tool to inventory and rank Canada’s abandoned mine tailings with respect to their potential for critical mineral extraction, liability mitigation and carbon capture potential. This project will also undertake the development of an initial framework to compare primary sources to secondary ones for critical minerals production and evaluate an initial framework of sampling protocol for defining mine waste as a National Instrument 43-101 compliant resource. It will also carry out tailings sampling projects on targeted use case sites to test and validate the frameworks and proposed methodologies.

Project lead/Contacts
Dr. Tony Di Feo, Lead (CanmetMINING); Dr. Maziar Sauber (CanmetMINING); Dr. Shahrokh Shahsavari (CanmetMINING)

Government collaborator
CanmetENERGY

Project summary: A large historical stockpile of synthetic graphite at a decommissioned industrial site in Welland, Ontario, contains 0.5 million tonnes of material at a grade of 70 to 99.7% purity. If produced from primary sources, this amount of material would need a deposit of up to 11.65 million tonnes to equal a quantity of the graphite contained at this site. Based on carbon savings of 1 to 5.56 per tonne, up to 64 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions can potentially be saved as a waste source that can be transformed into useful products, such as electric battery (EV) anodes. The amount of graphite in an EV battery typically being from 25 to 70 kilograms per EV, this deposit could potentially produce over 7 million anodes.

Project objectives: To develop a process for recovering graphite from this waste site to produce material suitable for EV battery anodes.

Contact
Dr. Charbel Atallah (CanmetMINING), Dr. Konstantin Volchek (CanmetMINING)

Government collaborator
National Research Council

Project summary: The project seeks to build a business case for the development and evaluation of a novel hybrid water treatment processes for the following purposes:

1. Recovery of critical minerals, including copper and nickel from recirculating streams, while examining the effects of water recycling on the recovery and separation of critical minerals (via fines and ultra-fines) from active Canadian mining operations (mainly flotation)
2. Recovery of battery metals from mining industry effluent streams
3. Recovery of lithium and other critical co-products (i.e., magnesium) and high-value products (i.e., potassium) from largely ignored lithium-containing wastewater

Contact
Dr. Delin Li (CanmetMATERIALS)

Project summary: Cobalt (Co) and nickel (Ni) containing battery waste get the most attention due to the high value of these metals. However, waste LFP hardly generates any interest. The current trend for automotive batteries is to reduce their Co content, and in recent years LFP has been reintroduced with promising results (energy density, simplified system, reduced cost and improved charging rate). To enable circularity and secure the supply of critical minerals for this key battery chemistry, this project aims to recycle waste LFP to produce LFMP, a cathode material, by using the melt-synthesis technology previously demonstrated at CanmetMATERIALS. Through collaboration with local producers, it will be possible to manufacture LMFP for which >90% by weight of the metals originates from Canada.

Contact
Dr. James Chen (CanmetMATERIALS)

Project summary:Currently used pyrometallurgical-dominant processes for recycling LiBs are known for their high-energy consumption from using high-temperature furnaces during which both Li and graphite are lost in slag. This project develops an advanced, high efficiency smelting technology for the electrode materials to recover Co, Ni, and Mn in the metal phase, and simultaneously recover Li.

Project objectives: To develop a novel and more efficient pyro-metallurgical process for recycling spent LiBs. The project is aiming to recover not only Co, Ni, Mn but also Li in an economical and environment-friendly process.

Contact
Gaofeng Li (National Research Council)

Project objectives: To develop processes to recycle the end-of-life NdFeB hard magnets containing rare earth elements of neodymium (Nd) and dysprosium (Dy) into value-added advanced powder that is suitable for the manufacturing of high-performance magnetic electrical parts.

Contact
Ben Yu (National Research Council [NRC])

Project summary: Current LiB recycling methods are largely limited to the recovery of nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) via the pyrometallurgical treatment of the black mass cake. NRC has been developing the SLM technology for direct separation of Li, Ni, Co and manganese (Mn) from acid leach solutions. It is likely that SLM will allow the development of a viable hydrometallurgical process to recover all LiB cathodic metals and produce battery-grade precursors. NRC has demonstrated successful metals separation with over 90% extraction efficiency at a bench-scale using the flat sheet SLM setup.

Project objectives: To increase the technology readiness level of the SLM from 4 to 6 through small-scale piloting. The project will demonstrate technical feasibility of SLM technology for direct separation and recovery of Co and Ni from a leach solution.

Contact
Julie Champagne (National Research Council)

Government collaborator
CanmetMINING

Project summary: REEs have been detected in Alberta’s oil sands in concentrations around 100 ppm, especially in waste streams generated from oil sand processing. The extraction and recovery of these critical elements through bioleaching offers several advantages over hydrometallurgy, including significant reduction in energy consumption and GHG emissions. The technology gap that exists from limited attempts made on REEs bioleaching needs to be bridged.

The performance of bioleaching depends on various factors including dynamics of bacterial populations. Characterizing microbial populations to study their composition and gene functions is crucial to understanding, controlling and implementing microbially mediated processes. Metagenomics and metatranscriptomics studies of the indigenous microbial populations in waste streams would help to better perform REEs bioleaching for a better recovery rate. Also, it has been shown that REEs may play pivotal roles in the metabolism of methane by microbes, and genomics studies would also allow to further investigate this relationship and increase the positive impact of REE removal from waste on global warming.

Project objectives: To develop an efficient bioleaching process to recover REEs from oil sands waste streams that would create value from waste, mine valuable resources from an easily accessible source that could reduce our international dependence, and reduce/prevent methane emissions.

Contact
Dr. Nancy Perreault (National Research Council)

Government collaborator
CanmetMINING

Project summary: With a high weight percent of Mg (25 to 30%), a value of over $400B and possible operation for more than 100 years, asbestos tailings in Canada are an attractive source of Mg, Ni and other critical minerals. Currently tested methods for Mg extraction from tailings release contaminants in air and water, and are an important source of GHGs. As an alternative, we are working to develop a suite of physico-biological processes to fragment the asbestos fibers into sub-micrometric fibrils to release and recover critical minerals.

Lab analysis will incorporate novel fragmentation technologies (electro-fracturation, high-pressure grinding rolls and high-pressure slurry ablation), innovative leaching solutions (glycine leaching, bio-hydrometallurgy and alkaline leach) and testing to produce ultra-high-purity battery-grade Ni and Co products. Along the project duration, technical and economic data will be reviewed to determine the economic viability of proposed flowsheets.

Contact
Dr. Carrie Rickwood (CanmetMINING)

Project summary: There are currently three Li and two Nb mining projects undergoing impact assessment. These elements are considered “data poor” and are not listed under Schedule 4 or 5 of the Metal and Diamond Mining Effluent Regulations, resulting in a lack of monitoring and/or toxicity data related to mining activities. While Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) has identified Li as a priority substance for environmental guideline development, toxicity data for this element is lacking. Information on solubility, partitioning and toxicity are required to make release predictions of new emerging metals and their potential impact to the environment, which is then used to judge the acceptability of the proposed management of tailings, waste rock and effluent for these new mining projects. Without this information, delays in the impact assessment review process occur because information requests made by government reviewers on these subject areas extend the federal review assessment period. During this three-year project, we propose to collaborate with ECCC and academic partners to provide dissolution and partitioning data as well as toxicity endpoints to improve our understanding of the environmental impacts of these elements. This will expedite federal review assessments and environmental quality guideline development.

Contact
Christopher Baxter (National Research Council [NRC])

Government collaborator
CanmetMINING

Project summary: LCA is a key tool in providing quantitative impact assessments that enable product sustainability certification. This tool can help identify hot spots to further reduce the environmental footprint at different stages of the supply chain.

Due to the lack of a complete, harmonized and transparent LCI, it is difficult to quantify and certify the environmental impacts of extraction and downstream processes of key raw materials. Building standardized LCI datasets is key to performing quality LCA. Unfortunately, the use of different LCI formats and LCA tools, combined with the unavailability of critical datasets, hinders the development and deployment of LCA-based certifications.

NRC has developed a methodology where the best available technologies are determined by optimizing the performance, economics and environmental impacts. The project will use battery metals (lithium, cobalt and nickel) as a representative case to develop a harmonized LCI format. Datasets will be extracted from literature and industry reports, and an overall accounting calculation will be completed to evaluate GHG emissions.

Contact
Dr. Andriy Plugatyr (National Research Council)

Project summary: The implementation of selective mining methods is essential for establishing secure environmentally responsible supply chains of critical minerals in Canada. At present, a wide-spread adoption of sensor-based sorting technologies is hindered by the lack of holistic methodologies for assessing amenability of feed to pre-concentration in the early stages of the project development.

Project objectives: To fill the existing gaps by developing and validating rapid and robust methods for assessing amenability of ores to sensor-based sorting using drill core samples. A comprehensive assessment of ore heterogeneity will be carried out using a suite of geosensing techniques to evaluate the potential economic and environmental benefits of incorporating ore pre-concentration technologies into process flowsheets that will help accelerate several mining projects toward production.

Contact
Dr. Dogan Paktunc (CanmetMINING)

Government collaborator
National Research Council

Project summary: The project will advance Canada’s critical minerals value chains in the battery precursors and other critical value chains by demonstrating technological feasibility and commercial viability of the DRC process.

Project objectives: To demonstrate the technological feasibility of the DRC process in converting chromite ore to high-quality ferrochrome and the competitiveness of the new technology in comparison to conventional ferrochrome smelting technologies.

Contact
Eliza Ngai (CanmetMINING)

Project summary: Ce production at the current REE prices is uneconomical. To reduce cost and improve the economics of REE projects, Ce removal from other REE, early in the flowsheet, is often suggested.

Project objectives: To gain knowledge on factors and conditions allowing for effective Ce rejection at near-zero REE losses from an REE-enriched sulphate solution. Results from this study can be used by Canadian REE companies directly to improve the economic competitiveness of their REE projects.

Contact
Dr. Rory Cameron (CanmetMINING)

Project summary: Canada has vast quantities of coal ash from decades of burning coal in electricity-generating power plants, which may contain several hundreds of dollars of Sc and REEs per tonne. CanmetMINING is developing a process flowsheet for the recovery of Sc and REEs from coal ash.

Project objectives: To demonstrate the technical feasibility of all the proposed unit operations within the proposed flowsheet and to produce a saleable Sc product and a saleable mixed-REE product.

Contact
Dr. Sanaz Mosadeghsedghi (CanmetMINING)

Government collaborator
National Research Council

Project objectives: To develop a novel integrated process for the separation of REEs. The process will incorporate electrodialysis (ED), as a membrane-base green technology with the conventional SX. ED coupled with chelation, which was previously studied at CanmetMINING, was found to be a promising method for REE separation. Experimental studies on introducing ED in a simulated SX process showed that integrating ED with conventional SX could result in a size reduction of an REE separation plant and minimize associated capital costs. Also, incorporating ED as a low energy-consuming technology with SX can reduce the energy consumption of the overall process, which corresponds to a reduction in operating expenses as well as CO₂ emissions.

Project leads
Dr. Maziar Sauber, Lead (CanmetMINING); Dr. Shahrokh Shahsavari, Lead (CanmetMINING); Dr. Tony Di Feo, Lead (CanmetMINING)

Project objectives: To investigate alternative mineral concentration processes for identifying the most economically viable and environmentally acceptable flowsheets for the production of critical metals from several REE and niobium ore deposits.

The process development studies required for each resource vary in scope and mostly depend on available background mineralogical and process development studies. However, the main objective is to maximize critical metals recovery and reduce capital and operating costs. The test work will lay the groundwork to develop the best flowsheet for each resource.

Project leads
Dr. Maziar Sauber, Lead (CanmetMINING); Dr. Shahrokh Shahsavari, Lead (CanmetMINING); Dr. Tony Di Feo, Lead (CanmetMINING)

Project summary: The metallurgy for Canadian ores containing REEs is based on hydrometallurgy which consumes large volumes of acids and organic solvents and produces large volumes of acidic wastewater and residues.

This project focuses on REE extraction from ore concentrates using supercritical fluid extraction.

Project objectives: To advance the development of a green extraction process for REE recovery from Canadian ores with minimal chemical consumption and waste generation, and to combine leaching and separation into one process.

Contact
Dr. Chen Xia (CanmetMINING)

Project summary: Canada’s REE-Sc-Nb resources are vast. However, many are comparatively low in grades. Although there are numerous methods to help recover these valuable resources, they all come with significant technological or production cost challenges. Our previous work indicates that acid soaking and water leaching process (ASWL) offers an alternative option to crack REE-Sc-Nb bearing minerals without the need for intensive chemical attacking condition that could potentially lower capital expenditures and operating expenditures, minimize the environmental footprint and climate change, and could lead to less production interruptions and related maintenance needs.

Project objectives: To review the ASWL performance on some other Canadian REE-Sc-Nb samples. If successful, this project will provide the REE-Sc-Nb industry a general understanding on long-term soaking and its impacts on their flowsheets that aim to reduce production costs and environmental impacts.

Contact
Dr. Bruce Williams (CanmetMATERIALS)

Project summary: Interest in Sc metal is growing with improved understanding of its impact, including strength, in light weight aluminum-based alloys. Currently, several process steps are required to produce aluminum-scandium (Al-Sc) alloys from Sc ore; however, a more cost-effective approach is direct production of Sc alloys through electrolysis of the oxide.

Project objectives: To develop an industrial-scale process for direct production of Al-Sc master alloy from Sc oxide and to assess the output quality compared to master alloys developed traditionally. The project will focus on Al-Sc binary alloys with the chemical composition required for electrical wire, as well as on Al-Sc alloys containing magnesium.

This project could help establish a connected value chain of Sc in Canada, more closely linking upstream supply of Sc to downstream demand and reducing costs.