- Safety improvements in lithium battery technology on the horizon
- Lithium demand driven by electric vehicle and energy storage system uses
- Quantum Minerals adds nine new claims at lithium-rich Irgon Mine Property
Not all news about lithium is good. Who wants to hear about another fire started by an exploding lithium battery? Such reports raise justified concern, particularly as lithium batteries are becoming almost as ubiquitous as outlets connected to the electrical power grid. But such ill tidings may soon be a thing of the past, for a new electrolyte may stop lithium batteries from catching fire. This welcome development removes one more hurdle to the widespread adoption of lithium-ion batteries and boosts the fortunes of lithium producers like QMC Quantum Minerals Corp. (OTC: QMCQF) (TSX.V: QMC) (FSE: 3LQ). As global demand for the metal continues to rise, the mineral resource company has increased its claims at its Irgon Mine Property. The company’s 100-percent-owned Irgon Lithium Mine Project lies within the prolific Cat Lake-Winnipeg River rare-element pegmatite field of southeastern Manitoba, which also hosts Cabot Corporation’s rare-element TANCO pegmatite deposit.
Demand for lithium is expected to continue to increase, as lithium-ion battery applications and systems multiply. The main driver, at present, appears to be power systems for electric vehicles. However, lithium batteries are also finding increasing deployment as part of energy storage systems (“ESS”). For example, by June 2018, Tesla had already deployed “over 1 GWh of energy storage,” including a single installation of 129 MWh in South Australia (http://nnw.fm/f1HlZ). In addition, French utility EDF plans to invest $10 billion in 10 GW of energy storage systems by 2035, and, here at home, New York State wants to have 1,500 MW of ESS installed by 2025. The city had its first behind-the-meter installation last May – a 300 kW, 1.2 MWh lithium-ion battery project in Brooklyn (http://nnw.fm/5k65C). These are just a sample of the many ESS projects underway or planned in the U.S. and around the world. It would be a decidedly unhappy state of affairs if one or more of those batteries were to explode or burst into flames, considering that a Tesla Powerpack weighs 2,650 lbs. (1,200 kg) (http://nnw.fm/fx9IO).
If the scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) get their way, that aforementioned explosion is unlikely to happen. At the 256th national meeting and exposition of the American Chemical Society, Gabriel Veith, who headed the project, announced an inexpensive method to prevent battery fires from occurring (http://nnw.fm/FQQk3). Named after an imaginary green substance from the world of Dr. Seuss, ‘oobleck’ is a suspension of cornstarch in water that demonstrates the properties of a non-Newtonian fluid, i.e., one that behaves like a solid when subjected to stress. As Wikipedia explains: “A person may walk on a large tub of oobleck without sinking due to its shear thickening properties, as long as the individual moves quickly enough to provide enough force with each step to cause the thickening. Also, if oobleck is placed on a large subwoofer driven at a sufficiently high volume, it will thicken and form standing waves in response to low frequency sound waves from the speaker. If a person were to punch or hit oobleck, it would thicken and act like a solid. After the blow, the oobleck will go back to its thin liquid like state.” Magical stuff indeed!
Quantum Minerals has now staked nine additional claims at its lithium-rich Irgon Mine Property, covering an area of 1,936 hectares (4,784 acres), which raises its contiguous footprint from 2,647 hectares (6,541 acres) to 4,583 hectares (11,325 acres) (http://nnw.fm/Ay1wE). The project, located at Cat Lake, Manitoba, is home to several pegmatite dikes rich in lithium (Li), plus accessory cesium (Cs) and tantalum (Ta) mineralization.
The former developer of the property, the Lithium Corporation of Canada Limited, carried out substantial drilling and underground developmental work from which it estimated the deposit to contain more than 1.2 million tons of spodumene-bearing pegmatite, graded at 1.51 percent lithium oxide.
Quantum Minerals’ portfolio also includes two volcanic massive sulphide (VMS) properties – the Rocky Lake and Rocky-Namew, known collectively as the Namew Lake District Project – which potentially contain base metal-rich mineral deposits. These claims extend over approximately 23,000 hectares (~57,000 acres) in one of Canada’s most productive mining regions, the Flin Flon/Snow Lake VMS mining district of western Manitoba, Canada.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.QMCMinerals.com
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