Hexagon Resources Ltd. has announced the results of an independent test conducted by Argonne National Laboratory, operated by the US Department of Energy. The results highlight the unique properties of the crystalline lattice of graphite coming from its McIntosh project in Western Australia.
ANL has described the McIntosh material as “HOPG-like”, which is extremely rare in the world of natural graphite and is very promising for the utilisation of McIntosh material in a number of value added applications from advanced battery systems to friction, nuclear, thermal management and electrical applications, to name a few. HOPG is an acronym for “highly oriented pyrolytic” graphite and is characterised by the highest degree of three dimensional atomic ordering.
This is a very high value synthetic graphite product selling for approximately US$30,000/tonne with 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes traded per year. In order to carry out the testing, ANL, based in Illinois, USA, utilised a dedicated synchrotron facility, Advanced Photon Source (APS). Commenting on the results,
Managing Director, Mike Rosenstreich said: “This test work is a continuation of Hexagon’s strategy to find high value applications for the very rare qualities that the McIntosh graphite is being shown to possess. Each tier of test work gives us a better understanding of the applications our material is suitable for and thus the markets that we can address, which other natural graphite often does not qualify for and where we can out-compete synthetic on a cost basis.”
“We now have proof that our flake is differentiated from other natural graphite projects. This puts us on a straight path towards accelerating our dual strategy of riding the energy/tech wave but also displacing synthetic graphite – because our material is good enough to do that.” “These exciting results from such a highly reputable lab is another building block on the way to early establishment of a pilot processing and technology demonstration facility which is something we are planning to do, tentatively in Australia.”