Hearst-area graphite deposit holder gets excited about mining

A new refining process has reinvigorated Zentek’s interest in mining and processing graphite at its Albany project in the Hearst area.

The Guelph technology company said it’s produced an ultra-high purified result of 99.99915 per cent that was taken from a sample extracted from the Northern Ontario graphite deposit, near Constance Lake First Nation.

Zentek reported July 17 that the “five nines” purity material was achieved from a specialized graphite purification process using a 100-gram sample taken from Albany and used during pilot plant trials back in 2017.

The sample was “thermally purified” in a furnace at the National Research Council of Canada. The process upgraded the sample from 85 per cent to greater than 99 per cent.

Zentek promotes itself as an intellectual property technology development and commercialization company that happens to have a graphite deposit, 30 kilometres north of Highway 11.

“These purification results utilizing an unoptimized, simple process has exceeded our expectations,” said Greg Fenton, CEO of Zentek, in a statement.

The company said it’s testing if this material to see if it can be used as an anode component for lithium-ion batteries as well as in the nuclear market. 

Categorized as a critical mineral, graphite can be used in electrical vehicle batteries as well as almost every facet of manufacturing in aerospace, defense, energy, electronics, telecommunications and transportation technologies. Zentek has used processed graphite material in protective clothing applications for healthcare workers.

Zentek possesses a freakishly rare and highly pure hydrothermal graphite deposit contained within a two descending pipes, spaced 250 metres apart, descending to depths of 500 and 600 metres. 

The company – once known as Zenyatta Ventures and ZEN Graphene Solutions – has transitioned over the years, under new management, from being a junior exploration mining company to a healthcare solutions company. To handle the exploration side, Zentek spun off a subsidiary company, Albany Graphite Corp. 

The Albany deposit was discovered in 2011, but has been slow to get out of the gate despite its high-grade promise and many laudatory statements about graphite being a new-age wonder material. Last November, Zentek put development plans on hold due to then-dipping graphite prices. 

Zentek said this week that since governments are making big money investments on the downstream manufacturing end of the North American battery supply chain, they are evaluating both the mining and graphite processing potential at Albany to make a material that would be suitable for battery manufacturers.

“The unique nature of the Albany deposit has created a competitive advantage for Zentek and its partners and with substantial investment flowing into the North American markets, we believe we are ideally positioned to develop the Albany project,” added Fenton in a statement.

“In addition, we are pursuing the value-add processing component of the anode supply chain to create a vertically integrated, anode solution.”

A 2015 preliminary economic assessment placed a 22-year open-pit mine life for Albany with projected production pegged at 30,000 tonnes of graphite ore a year. The company also imagines an underground mining scenario.

A year ago in July, Zentek published  a mineral resource estimate for Albany, showing an indicated mineral resource of 933,000 tonnes of graphitic carbon inside 22.9 million tonnes at an average grade of 4.1 per cent. The inferred resource stood at 375,000 tonnes of graphitic carbon within 13.1 million tonnes at a grade of 2.9 per cent.