Nickel breakthrough
A PROPOSED $650m battery metals refinery in Townsville, creating a 1000 jobs, is set to pioneer new clean, green technology its users believe will be a world breakthrough.
Queensland Pacific Metals plans to start building the refinery at Lansdown EcoIndustrial Precinct next year to produce nickel and cobalt for batteries as well as other metals.
These include high purity hematite used in steel making, magnesia used in cement, fertilisers and as a neutralising agent and alumina trihydrate used in water purifying alum or further refined into high purity alumina used in batteries and LED lighting.
QPM project manager Stewart Hagan, speaking to a Climate Media Centre tour group this week, said the direct nickel process was a breakthrough in refining technology.
No tailings dams were required and the large quantities of chemical reagents used in traditional high pressure acid leach processes, such as those in the mothballed Yabulu nickel refinery, were instead recycled.
It also allowed the extraction of other metals that at Yabulu ended up in tailings dams.
Mr Hagan described the shift as moving from “horse and buggies to vehicles”.
“The direct nickel process is a breakthrough and it’s because of the nitric acid it’s using to extract the nickel and cobalt and the ability to recycle that nitric acid,” Mr Hagan said.
“It isn’t being used anywhere else in the world and when we are up and running we will be the first.
“Once we get this plant commissioned, there’s absolutely no doubt that others will be climbing over themselves to use it.”
Mr Hagan said the process used significant amounts of water and gas to generate steam. Water would be sourced from the Burdekin Falls Dam, while waste gas, sourced from Bowen Basin coke mines, would provide carbon offsets.
He said the project would create up to 1000 construction jobs and 250 to 300 high
paying, highly skilled refinery jobs. The company plans to finalise funding early next year to begin construction in April and produce its first metals by the end of 2023.