- Ceylon Graphite conducted initial half cell testing for silicon enhanced vein graphite at WMG Battery Catapult, University of Warwick.
- Impressive 13% increase in discharging capacity was achieved for Ceylon’s natural vein graphite enhanced with core shell silicon additive compared to its baseline Ceylon Vein graphite material and commercial synthetic graphite.
- Acceptable first cycle capacity loss of 12%.
- The impressive performance is due to in-house developed dual core-shell additive technology and proprietary silicon enhancement capabilities; we also believe that the inherent properties of vein graphite such as high crystallinity & purity also play a key role.
- Ceylon’s “mine to battery” strategy will maximize the value of our high-grade Sri Lankan vein graphite by vertically integrating into an anode graphite producer for the rapidly growing global lithium-ion battery market.
In tests at a leading global, independent facility, Warwick University, performance of Ceylon’s vein graphite anode material was further improved by its core-shell silicon additive. This is the first time in battery research history that commercial spherodized, silicon enhanced vein graphite materials were tested in a lithium-ion battery in a half cell.
Results came in at 446 mAh/g for specific discharge capacity (SDC) for silicon enhanced vein graphite materials, which is 13% higher than what is achieved for vein graphite on its own (393 mAh/g, another impressive result) under the same testing conditions. The synthetic comparison data is from earlier test work performed at WMG (summarized in chart below)
Scanning Electron Microscope Picture of Ceylon’s Silicon Enhanced Anode Graphite
Fig1: Spherodized silicon enhanced vein graphite materials
Ceylon CEO, Don Baxter stated, “We had very good results from our initial coin cell battery tests as well as our full cell test, but I am excited to see the performance improvement of vein graphite with silicon enhancements. These results are a highly significant development for Ceylon, and we believe we can further improve these numbers as we continue perfecting the technology. The unique characteristics of our Sri Lankan vein graphite combined with our proprietary processing technologies produces a Li-ion battery with significantly higher power and energy as tested by WMG. In addition, we believe that the energy consumption of the end-to-end process of producing battery grade anode material from vein graphite is the lowest, relative to synthetic and flake graphite, because vein graphite from Sri Lanka does not require primary processing, due to the high in situ grade above 90%Cg”.
Ceylon also announces it has granted an aggregate of 4 million stock options to its directors, and Officers. Each option is exercisable at 20 cents per common share at any time until January 26, 2027.
QUALIFIED PERSON
Donald K. D. Baxter, P.Eng. CEO of Ceylon Graphite Corp., is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 (“N.I. 43-101”) guidelines and has reviewed and approved the content of this news release.
Ceylon Graphite is a public company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, that is in the business of mining for graphite, and developing and commercializing innovative graphene and graphite applications and products. Graphite mined in Sri Lanka is known to be some of the highest grade in the world and has been confirmed to be suitable to be easily upgradable for a range of applications including the high-growth electric vehicle and battery storage markets as well as construction, healthcare and paints and coatings sectors. The Government of Sri Lanka has granted the Company’s wholly owned subsidiary Sarcon Development (Pvt) Ltd. an IML Category A license for its K1 mine and exploration rights in a land package of over 120km². These exploration grids (each one square kilometer in area) cover areas of historic graphite production from the early twentieth century and represent a majority of the known graphite occurrences in Sri Lanka.
