Environmental challenges and technological applications of graphite

Barely a day goes by without a news story highlighting some critical mineral supply or geopolitical risk. Minerals such as lithium, nickel, copper, magnesium, graphite, and rare earths are key to the energy transition and inputs for aerospace and defense applications, given the massive growth in battery manufacturing and electrification.

Let’s take a closer look at one of these minerals: graphite. Graphite is a crystalline form of pure carbon that has high electrical conductivity, heat resistance, and other properties that make it an essential material in a variety of industries, including steelmaking, nuclear reactors, refractories, brakes, lubricants, and batteries.

While the battery industry currently accounts for about 20% of graphite demand, it is expected to drive the majority of forecast demand, with the world facing a more than 3-fold graphite supply shortfall by 2030.

This daunting challenge is compounded by the fact that China produces about 70% of the world’s natural graphite and about 50% of its synthetic graphite, and controls nearly 100% of the refining process. Coated spherical graphite is a key ingredient in lithium-ion battery anodes, which, while cheaper and less attractive than lithium, make up 20-50% of the battery’s weight.

                       Scanning electron microscope image of spherical graphite

Dirty processes for a clean future

Unfortunately, producing graphite has historically been a dirty business. There are two types of graphite: mined natural graphite and synthetic graphite derived from petroleum coke.

Natural graphite is mined as an ore and then goes through beneficiation steps such as crushing, grinding, screening and flotation to remove impurities. This process is subject to the same environmental issues as all mines.

Synthetic graphite, on the other hand, is made from petroleum coke (a byproduct of oil refining), calcined at about 1400°C and graphitized at about 3000°C. Reaching such high temperatures requires a lot of energy, so Chinese synthetic graphite produces 2-4 times more emissions than natural graphite.

Currently, companies are working to build domestic graphite resources, but these companies expect customers to pay 30-50% more than Chinese graphite.

Therefore, laboratories and startups are trying new ways to synthesize graphite using other carbon feedstocks such as methane, biomass and coal. We will explore some of these methods in the next article.

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