Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has provided a progress update on the Graphene Aluminium-Ion Battery technology (“G+AI Battery”) being developed by GMG and the University of Queensland (“UQ”) under a Joint Development Agreement with Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest metals and mining groups. GMG has announced that it has signed a service contract with the Battery Innovation Center of Indiana (“BIC”) in the United States of America to support the next phase of development of the Graphene Aluminium-Ion Battery.
BIC is a collaborative initiative designed to incorporate leadership from renowned universities, government agencies, and commercial enterprises. BIC is a public-private partnership and a not-for-profit organization focusing on the rapid development, testing and commercialization of safe, reliable and lightweight energy storage systems for defense and commercial customers. It is a unique organization that has been leading battery cell development for world leading battery companies for over 10 years and has carried out over 500 battery development projects.
By collaborating with BIC, GMG can take advantage of BIC’s technological capabilities and manufacturing facilities and avoid the capital cost of building a pilot plant, that can cost more than AU$10 million dollars, to produce sample cells in advance of mass production. Under its service agreement with BIC, GMG will pay for services rendered and retain all intellectual property of the development work. The service agreement with BIC will enable GMG to optimize BIC’s cell design and battery manufacturing equipment during its scale up of battery production, thereby delaying capital expenditures for manufacturing capacity until battery development is further derisked.
GMG is currently optimizing the G+AI Battery pouch cell electrochemistry. The Company previously announced that it produced multiple battery pouch cells with over 1000 mAh (1 Ah) capacity. This was a major milestone achieved to demonstrate scalability from coin cells to pouch cells.
The battery technology readiness level (“BTRL”) of the Graphene Aluminium-Ion technology remains at Level 4. GMG is currently optimizing electrochemical behavior for pouch cells via ongoing laboratory experimentation. Through collaboration with the BIC it is anticipated that the battery technology readiness will progress to BTRL 7 and 8 since the equipment and process needed to make the Graphene Aluminium-Ion batteries is the same as those employed to make Lithium-Ion Batteries.
