This story is part of The Salt Lake Tribune’s ongoing commitment to identify solutions to Utah’s biggest challenges through the work of the Innovation Lab.
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There is more graphite than anything else in a lithium car battery, and China produces nearly all the graphite that is used.
A Utah company believes it has an alternative, and there are tons of the material sitting on the ground in Juab County.
The alternative is nanosilicon, and it’s not just a substitute for graphite. The material is 10 times more efficient at holding battery power, and it can be recharged in a fraction of the time.
“That means, basically, you will now have a car that could go 50% longer range, and also be able to charge completely within under 10 minutes,” said Andre Zeitoun, founder and CEO of Ionic Mineral Technologies.
With a new processing facility in Provo, Zeitoun’s company has plans to crank out up to 20,000 tons of nanosilicon per year from mines it owns in Juab County in what could become a billion-dollar industry employing hundreds of people.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Max Yan, a chemical engineer for Ionic Mineral Technologies, closes a piece of thermal reduction machinery used to produce nano-silicon at the company’s production facility in Provo on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023.
The advantages of nanosilicon in lithium batteries have been known for some time, but it isn’t widely used. Silicon has to be reduced to an incredibly fine powder (grains less than 5 nanometers, or five billionths of a meter) to be considered nanosilicon. That’s an expensive process. Synthetic nanosilicon can run as high as $135,000 per ton, Zeitoun said.
But in the hills north of the historic mining town of Eureka, about 90 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Ionic MT has a handful of open pit mines with deposits of “halloysite,” a mineral-bearing ore that has both silicon and aluminum.
“Halloysite has a natural nanostructure. The concept is that they can take advantage of that nanostructure,” said University of Utah Metallurgy Professor Zak Fang. Fang runs the U.’s Powder Research laboratory, which did some preliminary proof-of-concept work for Zeiton and Ionic MT.
“At the time, he didn’t have much of a lab. Now he has built up his own lab,” said Zak, who described Ionic’s approach as “promising.”
Graphite functions as a battery’s anode, which is where lithium ions sit in a solution when the battery is charged. When power is needed, the lithium ions migrate to the cathode, generating electrical current.
As Zang explains, graphite makes a good anode because its crystalline structure has thin layers that lithium ions can fit between. Silicon, on the other hand, doesn’t have that structure. When normal silicon is used as an anode, it will swell as it absorbs lithium ions during charging, which can rupture the battery. Reducing the
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Ionic Mineral Technologies’ open-pit mine for halloysite is seen near Eureka on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023.
silicon particles to nanoscale minimizes the swelling.
The halloysite from the company’s mines contains silicon “nanotubes,” a naturally occurring nanostructure. Using a patented process, they remove the aluminum while preserving the nanotubes.
“Hence, we’ve now made a material that everyone’s trying to make synthetically from the bottom up,” said Zeitoun. “We’ve gone from the top down and figured out how to get it reduced while still keeping that structure.”
Both Fang and Zeitoun said battery makers also can combine graphite and nanosilicon in a battery at any percentage, allowing them to slowly add the advantages of nanosilicon while still preserving the cost advantages of graphite.
Zeitoun said the company is vertically integrated because it owns both the mine’s raw materials and the process and facility to make the nanosilicon battery-ready. The company recently opened a 37,000-square-foot processing facility in Provo, where the aluminum will be removed. Zeitoun said the aluminum is also a critical mineral in high demand and will be sold.
He added Ionic MT, which is privately held, will soon be announcing an agreement with a major battery maker.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Keith Brooks, the chief operating officer for Ionic Mineral Technologies, conducts quality control assessments on the nano-silicon powder to increase battery performance at the company’s production facility in Provo on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023.
The company is starting with a goal of producing 2,000 tons of nanosilicon per year when it begins processing ore in the third quarter of 2024, with plans to increase to 20,000 tons annually. Given the high price of synthetic nanosilicon, the company has a potential of billions of dollars in revenue. That also would bring millions in tax revenue to the state.
The company currently employs 10 people, including two scientists who earned their Ph.Ds working on the process. Once the company reaches its 20,000-tons-per-year goal, it could potentially employ hundreds of people, Zeitoun said.
