Battery-grade manganese producer Giyani Metals Corp has announced that high-purity manganese oxide (HPMO) produced from its Johannesburg demonstration plant has successfully met Phase 1 qualification standards set by US battery technology company Charge CCCV (C4V).

Giyani’s HPMO will now proceed to Phase 2 of C4V’s Digital DNA Supply Chain Qualification Program.

Giyani is the developer of the K.Hill battery-grade manganese project in Botswana. The company has developed a proprietary hydrometallurgical process to produce battery-grade manganese products used in cathode precursor materials for electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage systems (ESSs).

The HPMO used in C4V’s qualification programme was produced at Giyani’s demonstration plant in South Africa, rather than at laboratory scale. Giyani will supply additional quantities of HPMO to C4V for use in phases 2 and 3 of the qualification programme as well.

Phase 2 testing is expected to take about five months and will involve single-layer pouch cell testing to evaluate long cycling, cycling stability and rate testing.

Phase 3 will involve multi-layer pouch cell testing with similar performance checks and is expected to take about six months after Phase 2 is completed.

“The results from Phase 1 of C4V’s Qualification Program are an important milestone which has enabled us to demonstrate that our HPMO product not only meets specifications, but also meets the performance criteria through C4V’s coin cell analysis.

“This is the first step towards determining the viability of our HPMO product through an independent third party, and will contribute to the offtake process being continued in parallel,” Giyani interim executive chairperson Nigel Robinson said on October 21.

As part of the Phase 1 qualification, C4V performed coin cell analysis on Giyani’s HPMO to evaluate electrochemical properties such as first cycle efficiency, capacity, charge/discharge efficiency and density. The results confirmed that Giyani’s HPMO meets the required Phase 1 criteria, enabling the company to advance to the next testing stages.

“We are encouraged with the positive results from Phase 1 of our Digital DNA qualification program with Giyani Metals. Their HPMO product has shown promising performance during our internal evaluation and aligns well with our material and electrochemical standards. We look forward to advancing through the next phases of qualification and further strengthening our collaboration,” C4V supply chain VP Baasit Ali said.