Westwater Resources, Inc., an energy materials development company, announced today that independent testing of its ULTRA-PMG™ battery graphite material has shown outstanding resistivity values as a conductive additive.
Christopher M. Jones, President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “This milestone achievement is a critical step in developing our battery graphite business. We have shown that one of the key products in our business plan – purified micronized graphite (ULTRA-PMG™) – can be produced using proprietary processes that we intend to utilize in our pilot program later this year. Successful performance testing demonstrates that we can manufacture our ULTRA-PMG™ as a premium-grade, conductive enhancement material for all types of batteries at larger scale.”
Westwater’s ULTRA-PMG™ product has been produced by laboratory-scale equipment simulating the full-scale processing flowsheet. Westwater has been working with Dorfner AnzaPlan in Germany to commercialize processing technology to produce various sizes of ULTRA-PMG™ products. Samples from Dorfner were sent to Polaris Laboratories, an independent laboratory in the United States, for testing to evaluate the performance of the product. This testing consisted of resistivity testing utilizing “4T sensing”, standard for measuring resistivity for the international battery industry. The 4T sensing testing method measures the performance of a sample accurately by using separate pairs of current carrying and voltage sensing electrodes.
- Resistivities achieved from our first simulation samples were very desirable, especially for the finer size ULTRA-PMG™.
- The results show superior or comparable resistivity values reported by other manufacturers.
- Additional optimization of the process flowsheet will further enhance the resistivity values.
- Westwater’s ULTRA-PMG™ products can be used by the battery industry as conductivity enhancement material.