Quick Dips

Powering into the Future

An Auckland-based company, Pacific Lithium Limited, is fast becoming established as a leading supplier to the international giants of lithium battery manufacturing, with the first commercial shipments of the world's highest quality lithium carbonate recently made to buyers in Japan, Europe and the United States.

Pacific Lithium is producing high grade lithium carbonate from a unique chemical process. The company anticipates it will supply at least 600 tonnes of pure grade lithium carbonate to the Japanese market this year where the combined lithium battery industry uses an estimated 1,200-1,500 tonnes per year.

Demand for lithium is surging as the smaller, lighter, more powerful lithium batteries take over as the number one portable power source. In Japan last year, lithium ion battery sales tripled, to outsell nickel cadmium batteries for the first time ever, with major uses in compact cellphones, portable notebook computers and cordless tools.

Lower quality lithium from traditional mining sources had been associated with early problems in manufacturing the new generation of lithium batteries. Pacific Lithium has developed a specialist processing plant at Manukau City to produce a very pure product with low moisture content and fine particle size. Leading manufacturers including Sony and Siemi Chemicals in Japan and OMG in the US quickly approved the first samples.

Feedstock for the current lithium carbonate production is a raw lithium product imported from the US. The company is working towards producing lithium-based products from a variety of other sources, including extracting lithium from seawater and geothermal streams and a purification system to recycle lithium battery waste solutions.

The company has provisional patents and is exploring options for the commercialisation of its new lithium technologies. The company was initially established to recover lithium from salt water but technical delays and a shift in economic conditions suspended plans for an operation in Kaiaua on the Coromandel. Pacific Lithium is now moving closer towards commercialisation of this process with offshore partners. Negotiations are underway with a company in Israel to extract lithium from the Dead Sea and with another in Texas to extract lithium from brines.

In a third major development, Pacific Lithium has developed proprietary technology to recycle lithium from the fast growing world stockpile of used lithium batteries. The company is now working with a battery recycling company in the US to construct a recycling plant in North America which will be the first of several around the world. This project deals with the environmental problems posed by battery disposal and will ensure a feedstock of lithium for re-use by lithium battery manufacturers.