Review of publicly available academic, industry, and NGO research as well as first-hand personal accounts of the impacts of graphite mining and processing.

Summary:

• Graphite is a pure carbon compound composed of sheets of hexagonal arrays of carbon atoms

• Multiple chemical properties of both metals and non-metals make it an ideal Li-Ion battery anode material

• While graphite isn’t seen as particularly harmful itself to humans or the environment, graphite mining comes with risks such as acid mine drainage and dust pollution

• Graphite purification is where most of the environmental impacts exist, as the processes of refining natural graphite or creating synthetic graphite consume large quantities of energy and chemicals, especially given the spheronization and coating processes used to make graphite ready for anode use

• Some of the uses of graphite are dissipative, but for the remainder, scaled industrial processes to recycle graphite do not exist today, resulting in a global recycling rate in the low single digits

• For Lithium Ion Batteries (LIBs) in particular, because of the relatively low cost of graphite compared to other materials like cobalt and lithium, existing battery recycling processes either consume graphite during smelting or generate mixed “sludge” waste with carbon and other contaminants

• While China’s dominance of the graphite market (all the way from mining to anode material creation) create globally recognized supply risks, more work will need to be done to develop graphite recycling technology and infrastructure