Metal Market Magazine SMS group

Battery raw materials
An article published in
www.metalbulletin.com
Copyright (c) 2020 Euromoney Global Limited trading as Fastmarkets
Mining and recycling
strategic battery metals
As part of a strategy to diversify its activities, the Germany-based
international plant builder and engineering business SMS group is applying
its technological expertise to processing ores and the means to recycle
lithium batteries. Chief technology officer Hans Ferkel and senior vice
president for strategic project development Herbert Weissenbaeck discuss
the group’s plans and progress with Richard Barrett
Of all the battery metals to have
emerged as a key component of the
energy storage vital for modernday
life, lithium is probably the
best known in the public mind in
view of its widespread use in
rechargeable phones, power tools,
electric vehicles (EVs) and a wide
range of other applications.
While global production of
lithium has grown to meet
climbing demand in recent years,
the issues of exactly where the
metal is mined and processed for
batteries internationally – and
how it can be recycled when
batteries reach the end of their life
– have become strategic. Owing to
large-scale development plans in
the EV industry, there are also
questions about whether lithium
production will be sufficient to
meet future demand within the
next 4-7 years.
Such considerations have
encouraged development of
minerals processing and lithium
battery-grade chemicals
production at the Cinovec project
in the Czech Republic. Towards
the end of September, SMS group
announced that it had been
appointed by Geomet s.r.o., a joint
venture between Australian
mineral exploration and
development company European
Metals and Czech energy giant
CEZ, as the lead engineer for the
project. The Germany-based
international plantmaker will
SMS GROUP
supply front-end engineering
design (FEED) for what it says will
be Europe’s first lithium battery
chemicals facility.
The new facility is set to produce
about 22,500 tons of lithium
carbonate or about 25,000 tons of
lithium hydroxide per year (both
of battery grade), as well as tin and
tungsten concentrates from a
by-products recovery circuit. SMS
group will provide the process and
plant technology for the complete
process chain: from ore
comminution, via logistics for
concentrate handling, up to and
including the extractive
metallurgy processes (see graphic of
plant layout).
Under the FEED agreement,
SMS group will provide full
process integration, from the point
of delivery of ore to the
underground crusher, through to
the delivery of finished batterygrade
lithium chemicals for
battery and cathode
manufacturers. This encompasses
comminution, beneficiation,
Plant design for
battery-grade
lithium chemicals
production
roasting, leaching and purification
as well as the lithium process
flowsheet and the tin/tungsten
recovery circuit delivering metal
concentrates to refineries.
The aim of the FEED is to
deliver a binding fixed-price
lump-sum turnkey Engineering,
procurement, and construction
(EPC) contract with associated
process guarantee and product
specification guarantees for
battery-grade lithium chemicals.
Predicting the need
“In the last few years, we have
gained a strong position within the
fast-growing segment of
technological metals, including
those for battery production,” said
Herbert Weissenbaeck, SMS
group vice president for strategic
project development, at the time
of signing the contract.
SMS group notes that there is
good reason to believe there will be
increasing lithium project activity
within Europe. “Given the situation
that in Europe lithium ion battery
production capacities equating to
about 200 GWh per year are being
planned or are currently under
construction, and the fact that
about 800 t of lithium carbonate are
needed to produce one gigawatt
hour of battery capacity, the
production volume planned by
Geomet in the first phase of the
project will only cover a small
portion of the medium-term
48 | Metal Market Magazine | November-December 2020

demand generated in Europe,” it
highlighted in a press release.
The company believes that the
FEED contract appointment, at
what it says is Europe’s largest
hard-rock lithium resource, will put
the company at the forefront of this
developing industry. SMS group
also stated: “Especially, as we see
that off-the-shelf metallurgical
processes are becoming
increasingly inadequate for the
extraction of valuable metals from
non-conventional ores at
reasonable costs and with a
minimum ecological footprint, we
can count on our broad-based
portfolio of technologies and our
extensive know-how in both pyro
and hydrometallurgy, offering our
customers in the technological
metals sector optimized, integrated
solutions.”
Weissenbaeck explained further.
“Around 15 years ago we started
looking at the potential for growth in
metallurgical plants and our volume
of business and we figured out even
back then that it was becoming
obvious that growth in steel
metallurgical plants would be slower
than for new technology metals that
go into products for an electrified
future – like lithium, vanadium,
nickel and cobalt,” he told Metal
Market Magazine.
“Of course we supply blast
furnaces and casters and rolling mills
and other metals-making and
forming equipment, but we have
also always had a strong portfolio of
processing lines, which involve quite
a lot of sophisticated chemistry,” he
added. “Descaling of carbon steel
and stainless steels requires the
recovery of acids and the various
caustics involved. In the chemistry
department, we realised that metals
like lithium would develop strong
economic demand and that we had
quite a lot of processing steps
suitable for their extraction from
complex ores in our toolbox.”
He said that, performed in the
right sequence, some of those
processing steps are very suitable for
implementing production routes for
lithium carbonate, lithium
hydroxide, vanadium pentoxide and
vanadium electrolytes.
SMS group opened its
hydrometallurgical laboratory in
Vienna in 2008. “We started out
'We can count
on our broadbased
portfolio
of technologies
and our
extensive
know-how in
both pyro and
hydrometallurgy'
Slovakian battery manufacturer InoBat Auto offers the latest
developments in lithium-ion battery cells to a range of markets and
applications. The company recently entered into a memorandum of
understanding with Primobius that provides an evaluation
framework towards a potential Primobius-Inobat cooperation to
operate a commercial lithium-ion battery recycling facility in Eastern
Europe. InoBat is building a ‘gigafactory’ and it is anticipated that the
company will produce 50,000 tons per year of new batteries after its
full commercial start (expected in 2024).
small just with metallurgical test
work, mainly to complement
process developments around our
main lines of business, but now we
are increasingly dealing with
numerous non-conventional
sources of battery and technology
materials as the easy to mine and to
process ores, such as for example
nickel sulfates, are running out and
that more complex sources, that
require bespoke, environmentally
friendly and energy-efficient
processing solutions, such as – to
stay with the same example – nickel
laterites are receiving increasing
attention.”
He reminded that conventional
sources of nickel are the nickel
sulfates found in the northern
hemisphere, such as the major
deposits of Norilsk, or at Sudbury,
in Canada. “Nickel sulfate
processing more often than not
entails a significant sulfur dioxide
footprint, and so permitting [for
processing] in the Western world is
quite a challenge,” he added.
He pointed to plentiful resources
of laterites in the tropics as the
likely main future sources of nickel,
but added that the incumbent
processing methods for those ores
are rather capex and opex intensive.
“So the industry was spending
quite a lot of money on researching
new routes for that and this was one
of the entry points for us as a
hydrometallurgical laboratory for
test and development work on new
hydrometallurgical routes for the
extraction of nickel and cobalt
concentrates from those sources,”
Weissenbaeck explained.
Over time those activities
increased. SMS group signed a
contract two years ago with Altech
Chemicals, which produces
high-purity alumina, driven by the
battery industry, which is in high
demand as a coating material for
the separator foils in lithium-ion
batteries. Weissenbaeck noted that
an alumina coating is applied to
those separator foils as a precaution
against battery fires as well as to
inhibit battery charging-depth
degradation. “There is an
increasing demand for that and,
together with Altech, we did a
FEED study for an integrated HPA
plant and – based on that – we
signed a turnkey fixed-price EPC
contract for US$280 million to be
executed on their site in Johor
Bahru, Malaysia,” he highlighted.
“Now the ‘lithium train’ is
leaving the station and accelerating,
and here in Europe especially,” said
Weissenbaeck. “The European
November-December 2020 | Metal Market Magazine | 49
SMS GROUP

Battery raw materials
SMS group chief technology
officer Hans Ferkel said the
company formed Primobius
as a 50:50 joint venture with
Neometals to recycle battery
raw materials
governments have a tendency
towards becoming autonomous
when it comes to the supply of
battery materials,” he added.
He is consequently confident
that the FEED deal with Geomet in
the CEZ / European Metals joint
venture will not be the last one.
“There are other countries that
want to have their own lithium
battery chemicals facilities to fuel
the growing number of batterygigafactories.
We are participating
in this trend and are anticipating
having the edge over others,
especially here in Europe,” he said,
adding that, as a supplier that has
invested in getting its toolbox and
processing steps lined up in order
to master the underlying
processing challenges, SMS group
sees itself as very well positioned.
Compact timeframe
There are 14 months to complete
the FEED project for the Cinovec
project, but then what will the
timeframe be to start building the
commercial plant to process ore
from that mine if all goes to plan?
“In projects of this nature, the
length of the local permitting
processes is more often than not
becoming the main determinant for
the project timeline,” said
Weissenbaeck. “Apart from that,
the execution time for this
particular project, depending on
the chosen execution strategy and
structure, is not expected to differ
much from what one would expect
for a greenfield medium-size
processing plant complex in a
location with substantial existing
industrial infrastructure, such as
the infrastructure at Cinovec."
How will SMS group organize its
SMS GROUP
‘The Primobius
recycling
process targets
the recovery
of valuable
materials from
consumer
electronic
batteries ’
project team from across the
diverse range of engineers and
technologists in the company? “We
will put together all the people who
are willing and able to work on this
project – that is very important,”
said chief technology officer Hans
Ferkel. “Because sometimes if you
want to have a big change in a
company, you need people who are
willing to change and interested in
it. If you ask, then you will find
people in the company who are
willing and you can educate people,
who may not be the absolute
experts on something but, if they
are willing to do it, they can learn it
quickly, building not only on the
distinct DNA of an engineering
company with a strong track record
in disruptive innovation, but also
on the substantial groundwork
already completed by European
Metals over the last 5 years,” he
stressed. The FEED project team is
expected to exceed 100 people.
Alpha and omega
In addition to expanding its
in-house expertise in ore processing
technology, the company is also
investing in technologies for the
other end of the battery supply
chain, having recently acquired a
stake in lithium-ion battery recycler
Primobius GmbH.
“We talk a lot about the
ingredients you need to make
batteries to drag out of the earth to
the manufacturers of these kinds of
batteries, but still then you have to
close the loop,” said Ferkel. “That is
the reason that we have formed this
50:50 joint venture with Neometals
called Primobius,” he explained.
The Primobius recycling
process targets the recovery of
valuable materials from consumer
electronic batteries, including
devices with lithium cobalt oxide
cathodes and nickel-rich electric
vehicle and stationary storage
battery chemistries (with lithiumnickel-manganese‐cobalt
cathodes). Primobius notes that its
technology supports multiple
chemistries and formats,
sometimes without prior
discharging of the batteries. A wet
shredding process is used to
reduce the risk of fire hazard and a
combined off-gas system with
filtering and wet scrubbing is used
to remove volatile organic
compounds and dust.
“We are trying to use a
hydrometallurgical approach to
recycle all the most important
ingredients out of these materials.
We first shred the batteries and
then we have finally the black
mass, containing the most valuable
elements – for example cobalt,
manganese, carbon and lithium –
and this needs to be recycled at a
very high level of perhaps 90% or
more because this is very efficient
and then we can close the loop,”
Ferkel added.
Having undertaken laboratoryscale
testing, the company is now
building a 1,000 tpy pilot plant in
Germany at the site of the group’s
foundation and major engineering
workshops in Hilchenbach, which
will start operation next year. It
will take “all batteries coming out
of the field, or ones that have been
rejected during manufacture
because of some quality problems,
which also have to be recycled,”
said Ferkel. Its output will be the
ingredients needed to make new
batteries.
If the technology scales up
successfully, Ferkel said that a
commercial-scale recycling plant
with a capacity of 20,000 tpy of
battery input or more is envisaged.
“In the intermediate step we can
really test all these things,” he
added.
According to Primobius, it is
likely that over 15 million tonnes
of lithium-ion batteries could be
discarded globally from 2020-30,
so the need for technologies to
recycle them is ever more pressing
Herbert Weissenbaeck, SMS
group vice president for strategic
project development, said the
company realised that metals like
lithium would develop strong
demand and that SMS group
already had many processing
steps suitable for their extraction
from complex ores
SMS GROUP
50 | Metal Market Magazine | November-December 2020

and in an increasing number of
nations recycling is mandatory.
Funding the future
For speed in a competitive arena,
the battery recycling project
partners have found the money to
fund the pilot project from their
own resources. “For the battery
recycling, we are doing everything
on our own, to be quick and keep
the key know-how in the company
and own the intellectual property
needed ultimately to earn
money,” Ferkel explained.
Later on, for a commercialscale
plant, decisions will be made
on when and whether to involve
partners to source funding for
larger scale projects.
The timeframe for the
Primobius pilot is set. “We will
start next year. We want to test all
the batteries and get the products
out of it and then deliver those to
potential customers for these
types of chemicals in order to
make new batteries. So we want to
have this done next year,” Ferkel
concluded.
Reinventing SMS group
While SMS group has a long-established
range of plant and technologies, including
meltshops, steel and non-ferrous rolling
mills, processing lines, and forging and
extrusion equipment for international
markets that it continues to serve, it is also
consciously diversifying its activities to
supply rapidly emerging markets, such as
the battery metals projects described in the
main article, plus scandium, niobium,
silicon and various rare earths.
Demand for metals that have historically
been more or less the captive by-products of
the production of other metals – sometimes
used as the definition of a minor metal – has
catalysed the development of processes and
technologies to enable their production from
unconventional sources or via advanced
recycling schemes, and sometimes both.
It is the potential growth in demand for
equipment needed for those new markets
that has stimulated SMS group’s
diversification and a degree of reinvention.
While the smelting, rolling and finishing of
industrial metals like steel and aluminium
remain core parts of the company’s portfolio,
pyrohydrolysis, hydrolytic distillation,
oxidative precipitation and fluidised bed
technology, together with other techniques
of extractive metallurgy, have become an
extended part of the company’s range in
recent years.
In addition to the example of the project
with Altech on high-purity alumina (see
main article), Australian mining corporation
TNG Limited, based in Perth, Australia,
and SMS group plan to implement a process
enabling the production of CO 2
-neutral
hydrogen as the Mount Peake titanium/
vanadium/iron project is developed in the
Northern Territory of Australia. The
hydrogen produced will be used as a
reducing agent to make the production of
titanium, vanadium and iron from
fine-grained titanomagnetite concentrate
carbon-neutral.
Under the umbrella of its New Horizons
programme, many other projects are under
way that are also not connected directly with
the group’s traditional core business.
SMS GROUP
Additive manufacturing
“For example, powder metallurgy [and 3D
printing] are not in our core business yet,”
said Ferkel, but the company has already
made significant in-roads into that area.
“We sold a metal-powder atomization plant
to Outokumpu as equipment as a service
and we are also looking to our own plants
that we are selling to see where we can use
3D printed parts,” he added.
The atomization plant for Outokumpu
– scheduled to become operational in early
2022 – will be designed for an annual
production of up to 330 tons of stainless steel
powder. It is also a first for SMS group in
being the first ever facility that the company
is supplying under a subscription contract.
One of the established advantages of
additive manufacturing is its ability to make
parts that can be designed on a computer
with advanced design software, but which
are impossible to actually make by using
conventional machining techniques. “Some
things are not possible if you try to produce
it by conventional drilling or cutting, so you
Forging of the first billet on the highspeed
open-die forging press supplied
by SMS group to Gustav Grimm in
Remscheid, Germany
have to produce it by a flow model or
similar,” Ferkel elaborated. “It can be nice
looking, but then no-one can produce it.
With 3D printing, you can produce such
parts and that is also something we can use
in our plant at different sites,” he added.
A manufacturer of high-alloy forgings,
Gustav Grimm Edelstahlwerk GmbH &
CO. KG, based in Remscheid, Germany,
started running a 31.5/34-MN high-speed
open-die forging press supplied by SMS
group earlier this year (see photo). For the
first time, the plantmaker installed an
additively manufactured machine
component in an open-die forging press.
Made from aluminium alloy, the
3D-printed hydraulic manifold block is
much lighter and more compact than one
conventionally made from steel, and has a
flow-optimized design.
Changing mindset
Introducing such new technologies and
concepts into SMS group – a company with
a mechanical engineering heritage
stretching back well over a century – can
raise challenges.
“That is another reason why you need an
interdisciplinary team because sometimes,
also, you need someone to sign for it that this
component will work and then you must be
sure,” said Ferkel. “If you confront someone
with perhaps 30 years on normal technology
of manufacturing things, then to change this
guy to be able to think in a 3D-printed
manner – that needs some time. So you
always need this mix of young,
open-minded people that challenge the
more experienced people and finally
something useful comes out,” he explained.
Ferkel described the site of one of SMS
group’s major workshops, at Hilchenbach in
Germany, where the 1,000 tpy pilot
lithium-ion battery recycling plant
described in the main article is being built, as
the “cradle of the SMS group.” He said that
it also shows how the SMS group is able to
reinvent itself again and is also able to
change: “It is not just a physical change but a
mindset change,” he concluded.
November-December 2020 | Metal Market Magazine | 51

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