Hazer Group Ltd (ASX:HZR) is undertaking the commercialisation of the Hazer Process, a low-emission hydrogen and graphite production process.
The Hazer Process enables the effective conversion of natural gas and similar feedstocks, into hydrogen and high quality graphite, using iron ore as a process catalyst.
Today the company has revealed that the company has produced synthetic graphite of 99% purity under non-optimised conditions.
Dr Andrew Cornejo, chief technology officer for, commented:
“It is promising that even under non-optimized conditions the characteristics of the graphite produced by the Hazer Process correlates well with commercially available premium graphite.
"These initial results show that Hazer’s graphite is highly crystalline with few defects, key requirements for high-end graphite markets such as battery applications.”
Hazer plans to implement a development and testing roadmap that initially focuses on the lithium-ion battery market for its high-grade synthetic graphite.
Ongoing commercialisation and scale -up development is underway targeting ongoing improvement of the yield and quality of the hydrogen and graphite produced via the Hazer process.
99% graphite details
Hazer has produced graphite at 99% TGC (total graphite content), through initial methane decomposition and a single stage chemical purification.
Importantly, the chemical purification can be undertaken without the use of hydrofluoric acid (HF).
Prior to chemical purification, the graphite product harvested directly from the Hazer reactor under non-optimised conditions has TGC purity of 86%.
These results using large-scale laboratory reactors are extremely promising and provide a solid foundation for the ongoing optimisation of Hazer’s reaction conditions to enhance the yield and quality of the graphite produced
Geoff Pocock, managing director, added:
“Hazer is extremely pleased with these initial results and believes this will provide a strong platform for further growth, through both optimisation of the core reaction conditions and as we undertake further application testing of Hazer’s graphite for batteries and other key graphite markets.”
Analysis
Today's results are very promising and provide a solid foundation for the ongoing development within the company’s new scaled-up laboratory, based at the University of Sydney.
The company has now set in place a development and testing roadmap that focuses on the lithium-ion battery vertical for its graphite product, as well as potential applications in other graphite markets.
Hazer also plans to develop and test small-scale lithium-ion batteries within its laboratory using synthetic graphite produced from the Hazer Process.
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