NEWS and very good indeed.
SAINT JEAN CARBON FILES PATENT FOR SPHERICALLY SHAPING GRAPHITE FOR LITHIUM ION BATTERIES
Saint Jean Carbon Inc. has successfully filed a patent to produce spherically shaped graphite to be used in lithium-ion batteries. The spherical shape offers the best volume-to-area ratio and the maximum materials density. All of this leads to a high-specific-volumetric-energy package, ultimately giving a better discharge and recharge rate. The system is engineered to produce material in a range of sizes from three microns to 30 microns with 2.5-micron increments.
Paul Ogilvie, chief executive officer of Saint Jean Carbon, commented: "Our team has spent many years working through the hurdles presented by the difficulty in producing spherical-shaped graphite. A number of successful attempts have led us to the final design. As the electric car business continues to grow and with that, possibly, the demand for spherical-shaped graphite will grow. If you want to be in the business of supplying future demands, you need to know how to make the material needed. That will mean more than just having a graphite resource, but also a graphite engineering team."
The basics of the system are as follows: Spherical graphite is produced by moving (circulating) the micronized graphite material at great speed in a stainless steel cylinder, allowing the weight of the material to carry itself into the wall of the cylinder, with enough impact to break off the small, rough protruding pieces on the planner edge, thus leaving a smooth edge. The impact must be soft enough not to crush the material, yet strong enough to smooth out the rough edges, producing a potato-like shape. The wanding method comprises a long vertical cylinder with articulating wands that rotate in the opposing direction to the air feed direction, encouraging the graphite to continually bounce off the wall as it travels up the cylinder. Contemporaneously, the graphite and pressurized air meet at the blending coupling and enter the cylinder at the base; angled to flow the air up the walls of the cylinder in a spiral pattern. Traveling up and into the cylinder causes the micronized graphite to lightly bouncing off the interior wall of the cylinder at a tremendous velocity. The material repeatedly hits the interior wall through the air feed, and the wanding also forces the material to strike the wall repeatedly. At the top, the material is captured in the recovery filtration system -- the system is a continuous feed and can produce material from three microns to 30 microns in 2.5-micron increments.
The company plans to complete a bench-scale version that should be able to produce sample material for customers. The next step in the process is the carbon coating of the shaped material. The company will complete the patent filing for the coater by the middle of next week, with a goal to release that information to the company's shareholders. Each of these steps continues to move the company forward in its efforts to create commercially available, value-added graphene products for the growing markets it represents.
Dr. Don MacIntyre, PGeo, the company's geologist and a qualified person, reviewed and approved the technical and scientific information in this release. |
