A demonstration plant for biographite will be up and running in Finland in a couple of years. New-Zealand-based CarbonScape will start the sample production of biographite at Sunila in Kotka, Southern Finland. Source: Forest.fi
Biographite is a more eco-friendly material used in the batteries of electric vehicles.
Biographite is made of wood chips, available as a sidestream of forest industry. It can be used in lithium-ion batteries to replace mined or fossil-based synthetic graphite, the market of which is dominated by China.
The lithium-ion battery in an electric vehicle weighs several hundred kilograms, and graphite makes up almost half of its volume (42%). According to CarbonScape, the performance of biographite is equal to the best-performing synthetic graphite and exceeds that of natural graphite.
CarbonScape plans to start constructing the plant next year, and the sample production will begin in 2026. The partner in this project is the Finnish-Swedish forest industry company Stora Enso, an important producer of renewable materials.
The production of carbon-based graphite in China is unethical and burdening on the environment, said Katariina Torvinen, Research Manager at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, in an interview with the Forest Finland project in 2022.
“In the current global situation, issues related to batteries are important. It is of great significance if the graphite produced unethically in China can be replaced with material from a sidestream of the Finnish forest industry,” said Ms Torvinen in an article on an advertisement page in the daily Ilta-Sanomat in 2022.
The European Union has defined graphite as a critical raw material, and according to CarbonScape, the envisaged production complies with the EU’s sustainability goals.
According to CarbonScape, the product is carbon negative. Compared to synthetic and mined graphite. It saves up to 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per tonne of material. The temperature required by the process is only half that required for synthetic graphite, and the production takes hours instead of weeks.
The investment is estimated to cost about EUR 40–50 million. CarbonScape expects to reach a market share close to 20% in Europe and the US by 2035.
