(127g) Carbon Ore-Derived Critical Materials for Clean Energy Technologies

This presentation will focus on an emerging upgraded carbon ores to products (UCOP) technology for converting coal and coal wastes to high-quality graphite to assist in mitigating domestic critical graphite supply chains. Graphite has attractive applications for clean energy technologies such as active material for fabricating lithium-ion battery (LIB) electrodes, components for nuclear reactors, industrial electrodes, and lubricants as well as other uses in military applications. Trends in the manufacture of electric vehicles that use graphite-based LIBs are rising steeply in the United States and globally, but the U.S. domestic supply chains for graphite, the largest component in an LIB by mass, is severely limited and faces complicated geopolitical dynamics with foreign sources. Consequently, the United States has designated graphite as a critical mineral to focus attention and resources to develop technologies to meet the challenge of limited domestic graphite supply chains. Results obtained so far based on the UCOP process have successfully validated the technology at the laboratory scale, with the produced graphite material showing up to 95% degree of graphitization, high carbon purity of ~99.98%, residual ash content of ≤0.02%, negligible moisture, low trace elements, and high electrochemical stability. These results suggest that the emerging UCOP technology is a promising approach to effectively synthesize high-quality graphite from abundant coal and coal waste resources in the United States to create a sustainable domestic critical graphite supply chain. A brief description of the status of UCOP process development and representative results will be presented.