Production of Battery Grade Graphite

American Energy Technologies Co., a woman-owned small business concern of Illinois, will be joined by two suppliers of natural graphite and a supplier of two types of synthetic graphite, as well as by several target customers, well established DoD supply chain lithium-ion battery manufacturers, some employing natural and others employing synthetic graphite in their batteries. The objective of this project is to stand up a manufacturing process for making both synthetic and natural spheroidal carbon-coated graphite for use in battery anodes. In addition to the main goal, the process will generate a co-product, a non-spherical graphite, to be used in a variety of energy systems which include lead-acid, alkaline, lithium primary batteries and supercapacitors. These too support DOD programs of record and non-DOD applications/ The objective is to demonstrate that at the production scale, nearly 100% of graphite coming into processing circuit of AETC will find use in DoD supply chains, supporting advanced battery systems. Within the project, AETC will work as the processor, through their ability to perform calcination, graphitization, flotation, refining, milling, sizing, carbon coating, as well as offering extensive R&D and analytical support capability. To successfully complete this venture, there will be a combination of R&D and engineering efforts to create an all-American supply chain for the battery-ready graphite.