Albany Graphite (AGC), a subsidiary of Zentek, an intellectual property technology development and commercialization company, has been awarded a grant of $500,000 from the Ontario Government’s Critical Minerals Innovation Fund (CMIF) for its graphite purification and anode material development project.
Albany Graphite will contribute $314,500 to the project and is also collaborating with NRCan CanmetENERGY’s G3M project to include purification testing of Albany Graphite in its custom-built electrothermal FBR. The testwork will also involve suitability testing of ultra-high purity Albany graphite samples for lithium-ion battery anode and cathode additive and nuclear applications.
NRCan CanmetENERGY will provide $200,000 of in-kind support including technical expertise, specialized equipment and custom testwork.
The project will entail the production of approximately 5-6 tonnes of 85% purity flotation concentrate from the 110-tonne bulk sample that was collected in 2019.
In January 2025, Zentek announced that AGC had achieved a preliminary, proof-of-concept purity of 99.9991% directly from a larger sample.
Albany Graphite supplied a 1 kg sample of the homogenized bulk flotation concentrate to a North American manufacturing company specializing in industrial graphite and carbon materials. The manufacturing company reported that the material was easily purified to an ultra-high purity level without the use of chlorine gas or any other halogen gases that are commonly used for graphite purification when 99.999% purity levels need to be achieved.
The process will lead to the subsequent production of larger volumes of high-purity graphite, which will be supplied to OEMs and end users for assessment and qualification.
“The CMIF grant will enable AGC to build on its recent purification successes and produce additional flotation concentrate that will be used for subsequent purification and anode development testwork, and produce marketing samples of ultra-high purity graphite samples for third-party evaluation in advanced material applications,” said Greg Fenton, CEO of Zentek and Albany Graphite. “We are pursuing the value-add processing component of the anode supply chain to create a vertically integrated anode solution. Based on the previous successes, AGC anticipates the project will help to further de-risk the Albany project and enhance its investment potential.”
Source: Zentek
