CLEAN MINING
> By Alisha Hiyate
QUEBEC
powers up TO MEET BATTERY DEMAND
Provincial critical metals plan includes focus on recycling, circular economy
N
ouveau Monde Graphite plans to build its Matawinie graphite mine in aint ichel des aints, km north of Montreal, Que. as a zero-emissions mine. This is already a big deal, considering large electric haul trucks the company needs aren’t yet commercially available (it’s working with equipment manufacturer Caterpillar to have a complete electrified fleet ready before year five of the operation . ut considering that most of its production will be aimed at the electric vehicle market a sector that’s a crucial part of the global energy transition away from fossil fuels this Matawinie has a mine life of 25.5 years, with production expected in 2023. CREDIT: NOUVEAU MONDE GRAPHITE OCTOBER 2021
makes perfect sense. However, the company is also going a step further. Realizing that the volume of battery metals needed is far greater than reserves, the junior is already planning to incorporate graphite recycled from spent lithium ion batteries into its product. f all of the five key battery minerals graphite, lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese demand is projected to grow most strongly for graphite. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence has estimated demand for natural flake graphite will grow by by to . million tonnes, up from , tonnes in . Nouveau Monde president and CEO Eric Desaulniers says that to electrify all billion cars that now e ist, we would
need around million tonnes of processed graphite over the ne t years or so. “That’s more than all the reserves discovered in the history of humanity. We need to recycle that million tonnes in the market at some point because it’s a non-renewable resource,” he says. In June, Nouveau Monde and fellow Quebec company Lithion Recycling announced a collaboration for the recovery and reuse of graphite from lithium-ion batteries. (Lithion has developed an innovative hydrometallugical process to recycle batteries and recover of the materials.) “In our case a lot of our value creation comes from the processing of the CONTINUED ON PAGE 18
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