TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – High-purity alumina (HPA) producer Orbite Technologies, formerly Orbite Aluminae, on Thursday said it had shipped new higher-grade HPA samples to potential customers.

“With commencement of commissioning and commercial production drawing near, we have stepped up our commercial efforts. With two sets of samples now shipped, production of an additional set for different customer demands in progress and the announcement of our collaboration with NRC [National Research Council of Canada] in the field of battery applications, we are moving ahead on several fronts that we anticipate will help secure offtake from our HPA plant,” CEO Glenn Kelly said.

The company had in April shipped 4N8 HPA samples to prospective customers, for which it received positive feedback on the purity and chemical composition of samples. These prospective customers had indicated that their desire to test HPA was more representative of full-scale, commercial production, notably relative to mechanical properties.

Orbite subsequently modified its existing calcination equipment and process to more closely mimic the new permanent setup. These new samples produced at Cap-Chat, Quebec, were more representative of the company's intended final products. Purity levels achieved were up to 5N5 (99.9995% purity), which the company referred to as 5N+.

Orbite was working to produce milled samples to meet certain specific requirements regarding particle size distribution for other potential customers. These samples were expected to ship in October.

In July, Orbite announced that the NRC would evaluate Orbite's HPA for use in lithium-ion battery separators. Orbite's technology development centre would work with NRC experts to develop composite separator formulations containing Orbite's HPA. These substrates would then be applied to commercially available ceramic separators.

NRC scientists would use their expertise and cutting-edge facilities to characterise various separator formulations and benchmark the efficiency of batteries with separators containing Orbite's HPA against those with commercially available separators, containing no or competitors' alumina.