NEO Battery initiates design of pilot plant project to use its cost-effective, single-step silicon coating process

NEO Battery Materials Ltd (CVE:NBM) (OTCPINK:NBMFF) has announced the initiation of a pilot plant project where it intends to use in-house resources to design and test equipment that will use the company’s cost-effective single-step silicon (Si) nanocoating process. The Vancouver battery metals resource company said that NEO director and chief scientific advisor Dr JH Park and Suk Joong Hwang, who is a member of the firm’s Scientific Advisory Board, have started designing the pilot plant project. In a statement, NEO CEO Spencer Huh said: “NEO's team of scientists have also started to test and validate an equipment that will be used in the project by attempting to apply NEO's all solution based one-pot nanocoating technology for commercial-level micron-sized Si materials.” READ: NEO Battery Materials reports success in integrating silicon into graphite-based anodes “This research project has been launched at the request of several lithium-ion battery users. The feasibility study and related preliminary works to optimize the design process will be updated shortly,” he added. Meanwhile, Sung Rock Hwang, who is the chief operating officer at NEO said the goal is to establish a basic pilot-scale coating process design and to check the feasibility of NEO's nanocoating technology for metallurgical-grade silicon. “We are further focusing on a cost-effective separation method since it will capture the largest portion of energy consumption during our nanocoating pilot process,” said Hwang. “The pilot plant project aims to prove the capacity of the company to produce various sized Si materials ranging from around 50 nanometers to several micron-sized Si materials that are strategically important to conventional liquid-based Li-ion batteries and next-generation all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs)." Hwang noted that based on his experience at Samsung SDI, NEO is on a “fast-track to manufacture cost-effective silicon anode materials,” providing industry-required performance advantages. The scalability and mass-producibility of NEO's silicon anode materials are enabled through an efficient single-step process through which the company can realize economies of scale when manufacturing its Si material. NEO's single-step and one-pot solution process removes the need for a multistage manufacturing process, boosting throughput by eliminating unnecessary treatment steps which are bottlenecks. “Economical manufacturing is facilitated through NEO's single-step process that does not involve complex and expensive environments such as high temperature, high pressure, or a vacuum,” noted the company. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD), pyrolysis methods, or other high-cost engineering methods are not utilized when manufacturing NEO Si materials. Moreover, NEO uses low-cost coating feedstocks to manufacture the silicon materials which further lowers the cost of its end-product along with safe synthesis. Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive