Engineering and designing a demonstration-scale industrial plant

High Purity Alumina Demonstration Plant

Lava Blue, a producer of battery minerals and energy technology, engaged our team to engineer and design a demonstration-scale industrial plant in conjunction with the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The plant needed the capability of producing 20-kilogram batches of high purity alumina (HPA), an emerging key component in lithium-ion batteries.

Given the stringent purity requirements, innovation played a crucial role in the successful design, construction, and commissioning involved in developing a process that could manufacture HPA in a larger‑scale environment based on laboratory-scale information. Design flexibility helped accommodate the capabilities of local and international manufacturers—compounded by the challenging conditions and significant supply line constraints during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project also required novel solutions and bespoke equipment because conventional off-the-shelf equipment couldn’t accommodate the chemical environment, temperatures, and scale involved.

The finished demonstration plant has successfully produced purity levels 4N and 5N HPA (99.99 and 99.999 percent pure, respectively) at the batch scale required by Lava Blue. It will be used as the template for the future development of large-scale HPA plants in Australia and globally.

This project was shortlisted in the Innovation for Excellence category for Consult Australia’s Awards for Excellence in 2024.