In its first major milestone since its acquisition, Zinnwald Lithium has completed a pilot test into the creation of lithium hydroxide for use in electric vehicle batteries at its site in Germany.
Lithium-ion battery. Credit: Black_Kira / Shutterstock
Credit: Black_Kira / Shutterstock
Zinnwald's site, roughly 35 km outside of Dresden on the German-Czech border, has been billed as the first major lithium project in Europe - receiving significant funding as electronics and automotive companies continue to be battered by the chip shortage.
Read more: Zinnwald: Europe's first major lithium project enters feasibility phase
Industry Europe first covered the Zinnwald project back in July 2021, when the site entered its feasibility stage, speaking with the company's CEO Anton du Plessis about its plans and timeframe for work.
Du Plessis confirmed the company would be working on the production of lithium hydroxide for the time being in a bid to plug a market gap in Europe.
This pilot suggests scale-up and production of "economically significant" amounts of lithium is possible at the site and could play its role in ramping up the production of electric vehicles in a world where Germany's goals could be scuppered due to geopolitical events such as the Russia-Ukraine War.
Zinnwald has suggested that it will be primarily focusing on lithium hydroxide due to it "better aligning" with European needs.
The test work was conducted in Germany and was verified by a third-party laboratory, which ran chemical and physical analyses.
It concluded the zinnwaldite concentrate produced was around 99.9% purity, and commercial analysis performed indicates that annual lithium hydroxide production above 10,000 tonnes could be viable from the core Zinnwald license.
The tests managed to convert several tonnes of zinnwaldite into roughly 50kg of lithium hydroxide and the company claims the impurities were similar or below similar battery-grade lithium products.
“I am delighted that we have completed the pilot-scale test work necessary to demonstrate that the Zinnwald Lithium Project is capable of economically producing meaningful quantities of lithium hydroxide", du Plessis said in a statement.
"This is consistent with our strategy of pivoting the project to focus on the production of mainstream lithium products that is in increasingly high demand by the European EV and battery sectors.
Read more: Plans laid for UK's first lithium refinery
"Notably, the ability of the Project to deliver domestic European supply of important co-products such as potassium sulphate further strengthens our investment case, while equally importantly, the test work indicates that the process does not generate environmentally harmful side products", he added.
The results from the pilot will be applied to its basic engineering processes and utilised in an updated feasibility study on the site.
Zinnwald first acquired the site in 2020 for €8.8 million. A preliminary feasibility study into the production of lithium on the site was conducted by the project's previous owners in 2019.
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