– Rockwell Automation supports environmentally friendly lithium production to ensure supply in the UK
Rockwell Automation’s modern DCS provides reliable control for Cornish Lithium demo plant
BRUSSELS, April 19, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Rockwell Automation,(NYSE: ROK), the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, is working with Cornish Lithium Plc on a demonstration plant to validate the sustainable production of lithium hydroxide from micaceous granite.
The Cornish Lithium demo plant will be controlled by Rockwell Automation’s modern PlantPAx® distributed control system. This modern DCS provides a single control system for the entire plant and greater flexibility to make better business decisions.
“Rockwell Automation has both the technology and industry expertise to support the complex lithium extraction process,” said Phil Hadfield, UK Managing Director, Rockwell Automation. “We have successfully worked on lithium projects around the world, including Australia, Africa and South America. Rockwell Automation’s integrated architecture provides end-to-end system integration. Systems are designed with scalability in mind, leveraging the new advances in digital technology.
Cornish Lithium has been licensed to carry out an acid leach, selective precipitation and crystallization process developed to create lithium hydroxide from micaceous granite. This process is expected to be more environmentally friendly than traditional hard rock, which usually involves a significant calcination step, in which the ore is calcined at 1,000°C.
The validity of the process has already been tested in a small pilot plant in Australia and it has been shown that it can produce lithium hydroxide salt monohydrate. The next step is to build a demonstration plant in Cornwall. It will be a complete concept process from start to finish from feedstock to lithium hydroxide, using all the same equipment used in a full-scale facility with only one or two changes for reasons of scale. This actual process simulation will assure all interested parties and potential customers of the effectiveness of Cornish ore treatment technology prior to the construction of a full scale production facility.
“Rockwell Automation will play a crucial role in what we are doing,” explained David Moseley, process manager, hard rock minerals, at Cornish Lithium. “We want to try to simulate as much as possible industrial process control that we could employ on a large scale. We’re trying to put as much of that in the demo plant as possible because it’s a complex multi-stage process with a lot of recycles; and sequential operation, particularly with filtration, and process control are critical Rockwell Automation is creating the process control philosophy based on our instrumentation It is a number of different process control units that need to be coordinated to have one plant that works efficiently.
Two floors will be built; one is a mineral concentration plant where raw ore is crushed, ground and separated to create a lithium-enriched mica concentrate. The second is the chemical plant, with an acid leaching hydrometallurgical system that produces lithium sulfate, which is converted into lithium hydroxide. The chemical plant combines chemical reactors, precipitators, filtration and crystallization. The demo plant is currently under construction and, when commissioned, is expected to run for one year.
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