LONDON, UK: Green Lithium announced the successful production of its first battery-grade lithium hydroxide product.
This will enable Green Lithium to support the manufacture of batteries for more than a million electric vehicles a year from its refinery, the UK’s first large-scale merchant lithium refinery.
This is a significant development in the company’s journey, it validates the processing logic and ability to create a battery-grade lithium product using a sulphate-free and acid-free process and producing only inert mineral co-products.
These results were achieved through an intense laboratory testwork programme, which Green Lithium undertook with support from the UK Automotive Transformation Fund (ATF), a government-backed initiative to put the UK at the centre of the global transition to zero emissions.
At every stage of the refining process, Green Lithium is committed to substantially reducing the carbon intensity of current market-standard lithium refining. To do this, Green Lithium is maximising renewable energy input, utilising heat recycling and progressively introducing hydrogen. The Green Lithium refinery will produce lithium chemicals required to manufacture lithium-ion batteries: the key component of electric vehicles (EVs).
As the market for EVs grows, the supply chain needs to keep up. By building and operating the facility in the UK, Green Lithium aims to provide the missing link in the EV supply chain. Green Lithium’s refinery will use an industry-leading, sustainable, low-carbon refining process.
This will connect the UK and Europe’s lithium battery and cell manufacturers with abundant international sources of raw lithium material.
Green Lithium’s refinery will create more than 1,000 jobs during construction, and 200 jobs once operational. The 50,000 tonne per annum refinery will produce enough lithium hydroxide to enable the manufacture of more than a million EVs per year. Without this local supply of lithium hydroxide, the UK’s automotive industry would soon struggle to meet the EU’s ‘Rules of Origin’. This would result in tariffs on exports of EVs to the UK’s largest export market, Europe. Green Lithium is at the forefront of the electric vehicle revolution.
Founding Director of Green Lithium, Richard Taylor, commented: “The creation of this first battery-grade lithium hydroxide product is excellent news for Green Lithium and confirms the exciting trajectory our company is on.
“Drawing from three separate and distinct samples, we were able to manufacture high quality lithium through a dramatically more environmentally friendly process than is deployed at present in refineries in East Asia. That’s a landmark moment for us and for the future of electric vehicle production. “The Green Lithium refinery will be a keystone of the green energy revolution.”
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