Mineral Commodities Ltd. announced the successful completion of the Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) project 3 with Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, and Doral Fused Materials. CSIRO conducted 534 purification tests in the CRC-P project at increasing scale, including 84 lock cycle tests to simulate industrial processing. Testing was completed on both Munglinup and Skaland material in various forms including flake graphite concentrate, micronized flake, spherical graphite and spheronisation fines.

The project achieved battery grades (minimum of 99.95% purity) for both Munglinup and Skaland spherical graphite 4 with typical recoveries to product of 90%. Generally, Munglinup material is marginally easier to purify, with a 0.01% higher (absolute) purity in the process. The CSIRO-developed process avoids the use of environmentally unfriendly HF acid.

The process has been developed from first principles independently by CSIRO in sixteen stages of development including optimisation and scale-up, and associated reporting. MRC is delighted to be able to continue with its partnership with the expert CSIRO team on developing an environmentally sustainable purification process in the CMAI pilot scale project 5. The collaboration with CSIRO will be broadened in the CMAI project to include optimising the graphite spheronisation (shaping) process and scale-up of carbon coating to produce high-margin CPSG further enhancing Australian capabilities in this area of the critical minerals supply chain. CSIRO will also conduct, electrochemical testing on lithium- ion battery electrodes produced from the CPSG.

The CMAI project will allow MRC to supply larger quantities of customer qualification samples to secure offtake agreements MRC and CSIRO are currently in the process of formalising the partnering arrangement as part of the CMAI grant agreement. MRC will also engage Australian METS sector for: piloting of concentrate production, optimised Munglinup Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS), and delivery of an integrated ore-to-anode materials DFS in the CMAI project for commercial scale production. Initial samples from the CSIRO mini-pilot plant developed in the CRC-P project have been provided to Mitsubishi with positive feedback.

The mini-pilot is currently generating additional samples for customer evaluation to further support the Mitsubishi strategic collaboration agreement and provide samples to Traxys to support offtake agreements. Other near-term activities include pre-engineering for key equipment for the CMAI pilot plant and further evaluation of the optimisation activities identified in the CRC-P project.