Speaker 1: Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshatrati. This week sharkskins, plane wings
Speaker 1: and novel things. One of the best things I get
Speaker 1: to do in my job is to visit early stage
Speaker 1: startups full of passionate people coming up with the solutions
Speaker 1: to the climate problem. Some of them work with the
Speaker 1: kind of headline grabbing tech you hear about all the time, batteries,
Speaker 1: carbon capture, and even nuclear fusion. But there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of weird and wonderful inventions out there which hope to
Speaker 1: fill in the blank spaces in the net zero puzzle.
Speaker 2: What we've made here is inspired by sharkskin. It is
Speaker 2: much more simplified than actual sharkskin. So they're running in
Speaker 2: this direction. Yeah, and if you your figuzz you can
Speaker 2: hear that buzzing.
Speaker 1: That's the voice of Henry Belinski, the founder of micro Tau,
Speaker 1: and the high pitch noise you can hear it is
Speaker 1: his finger running back and forth across a thin plastic film.
Speaker 1: This is the startup's innovation, a textured film that imitates
Speaker 1: sharkskin to reduce drag on airplanes. To the naked eye,
Speaker 1: it's basically transparent, but when you look at it under
Speaker 1: a microscope. You can see these tiny ridges known as riblets,
Speaker 1: that mimic the pattern seen on sharkskin. Think about it
Speaker 1: like a high tech wrapping paper, but for planes, all
Speaker 1: in the service of using less fuel to fly and
Speaker 1: thus produce fewer emissions. Aviation contributes about two percent of
Speaker 1: global emissions, and its share is expected to rise in
Speaker 1: coming decades, so solutions are badly needed. Henry is showing
Speaker 1: me around a dimly lit room bathed in orange light.
Speaker 1: This is the lab microtower uses to three D print
Speaker 1: this film. Henry says the film can reduce fuel consumption
Speaker 1: on planes by four percent. Now that might not sound
Speaker 1: like much, but if the film can be rolled out
Speaker 1: across every lane worldwide, the fuel savings and the emission
Speaker 1: savings would be huge.
Speaker 2: So in five to ten years time, we'll will be
Speaker 2: flying on planes with our Sharkskin on them. But then
Speaker 2: we'll also be having them in the water in marine applications.
Speaker 2: We're replicating the patterns that we find in nature, and
Speaker 2: sharks are step one and a big problem for us
Speaker 2: to solve with big impact. But there's a whole host
Speaker 2: of really interesting materials.
Speaker 1: On today's episode of Zero, we hear from two startups
Speaker 1: I met in Australia. The companies are trying to solve
Speaker 1: very different problems, but both want to clean up existing industries. First,
Speaker 1: we'll hear from Henry at Microtower about where he thinks
Speaker 1: Sharkskin fits into the future of air travel, and later
Speaker 1: in the episode we'll meet Stephen Vasaludis, the founder of Novolith,
Speaker 1: a company trying to introduce a lower carbon form of
Speaker 1: extracting lithium for batteries. Micro Tawer was founded in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: It raised five point six million Australian dollars in a
Speaker 1: round led by the country's Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Then
Speaker 1: it got a three million dollar grant from the Australian government,
Speaker 1: which will go to fund trials with the country's low
Speaker 1: cost airline, Jetstar. I joined the startup CEO, Henry Bolinski,
Speaker 1: at the company's office in the outskirts of Sydney earlier
Speaker 1: this year. I also talked to Ian Leerman, the head
Speaker 1: of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, in a past episode
Speaker 1: of the podcast. The link is in the show notes
Speaker 1: if you want to hear more. Henry, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, good to be here now.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about sharkskin being used for good
Speaker 1: things Before we do that, how did you come to
Speaker 1: working on sharkskin applications for stuff?
Speaker 2: It was an unusual way to get involved. It came
Speaker 2: about from a global innovation challenge that the US Air
Speaker 2: Force Research Laboratory posted. It was actually late twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: that they posted this challenge, and they were looking for
Speaker 2: ways to reduce their eight billion dollar a year fuel burn.
Speaker 2: And the line's share of that came from their transport aircraft,
Speaker 2: so big heavy planes, things like C seventeen one thirties.
Speaker 1: Well, the Department of Defense in the US is probably
Speaker 1: one of the largest, if not the largest, emitter of
Speaker 1: greeno's gases.
Speaker 2: Yep, so I know the Air Force alone spends about
Speaker 2: ten billion dollars a year on fuel now, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: we've got we've got planes flying overhead to demonstrate it
Speaker 2: just for this podcast. We organize it. Oh no, we're
Speaker 2: under the flightpath here in Sydney. But it's a it's
Speaker 2: a nice constant reminder of what we're focusing on. And
Speaker 2: so ten billion dollar a year in fuel, you're talking
Speaker 2: on the order of tens of mega tons of carbon
Speaker 2: being emitted, So at that time they were really just
Speaker 2: focused on reducing their fuel burn in terms of saving
Speaker 2: money and also a national security issue because you know
Speaker 2: they're dependent on being able to burn that. So there
Speaker 2: was a global challenge. I responded to it.
Speaker 1: Is it a researcher.
Speaker 2: No, I was actually getting admitted as a lawyer at
Speaker 2: the time, but I do have a physics background, and
Speaker 2: so I was looking at these kind of online open
Speaker 2: innovation challenges. The thing I was interested in is whether
Speaker 2: you could find new problems to solve with old technologies,
Speaker 2: especially by looking to outside industries. So I tried a
Speaker 2: number of these open innovation challenges, and this air Force
Speaker 2: one came out. They knew about this idea of shark
Speaker 2: skin and that the microscopic patterns that you find on
Speaker 2: shark skin have the effect of reducing drag, and these
Speaker 2: microopak patterns reduced drag, but they didn't really know how
Speaker 2: to practically implement them on a huge service area like
Speaker 2: an aircraft, And so I proposed kind of modifying a
Speaker 2: computer chip manufacturing method called pholotography. It's a way of
Speaker 2: printing things that are even smaller than what you need
Speaker 2: for sharkskin with light and put that in and frankly
Speaker 2: didn't expect to hear anything back, but was selected as
Speaker 2: one of ten awards from around the world and went
Speaker 2: and pitched at an air Force base in Daton, Ohio
Speaker 2: where the right brothers are from the right Perdison Air
Speaker 2: Force Base. There was a whole process, but ultimately one
Speaker 2: a contract to build and develop and demonstrate this technology,
Speaker 2: and that's when I founded the company in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: So sharkskin looked pretty smooth. I've not touched a shark,
Speaker 1: but I'm assuming it's very small the changes that you
Speaker 1: are trying to replicate.
Speaker 2: You're right, So they do look smooth, and sharks are
Speaker 2: very efficient swimmers, and you would usually think that a
Speaker 2: smooth surface is the best way to move through air
Speaker 2: or water. What they're covered in, though, is if you
Speaker 2: do touch them, they feel more like sampaper because they're
Speaker 2: these microscopic ridges on the skin of the shark.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Those ridges are known as riblets, so they know sharks
Speaker 2: have developed them of millions of years with the beneficiaries
Speaker 2: of that great R and D. But the first work
Speaker 2: sort of humans looking at this has happened a while
Speaker 2: Agore originally done by NASA about replicating these microscopic patterns.
Speaker 1: So you're just you're kind of piggybacking off NASA's on
Speaker 1: science or US governments on science work, but actually showing
Speaker 1: them how to build it and apply it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so NASA did that original work. So they
Speaker 2: made them on the sort of a millimeter scale that
Speaker 2: knew that you need to them down to the micrometer scale,
Speaker 2: so fractions of the width of a human hair is
Speaker 2: what we're talking about to get it to work in aviation.
Speaker 2: So yeah, definitely the beneficiaries of not just NASSA, but
Speaker 2: a whole lot of work has been done the intervening
Speaker 2: years throughout academia and different research institutions.
Speaker 1: And so you propose this idea of making this stuff
Speaker 1: although you didn't have any equipment, you had never done
Speaker 1: it before.
Speaker 2: No, I was Henry from Sydney, and I am very
Speaker 2: lucky that the US government but also the entire advisory
Speaker 2: committee there took a punt on myself and also the
Speaker 2: team that I pulled together. So yeah, I definitely am
Speaker 2: lucky to work with very smart people on this too.
Speaker 1: And so now six seven years on, you are making stuff, yes,
Speaker 1: and we've got a tour of your facility and there
Speaker 1: is light printing happening. But just walk us through you
Speaker 1: briefly the steps involved in making this stuff, and then
Speaker 1: what happens once you do make these films? Right, they're
Speaker 1: basically plastic sheets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're essentially it's a pre fabricated film that
Speaker 2: you stick on to the outside of a plane, very
Speaker 2: similar to other films that are already applied to planes
Speaker 2: that are usually done for advertising or graphical purposes. So
Speaker 2: the way that we may factor and that kind of
Speaker 2: is our core IP and differentiator, is this process we
Speaker 2: call direct contactless microfabrication or DCM. That's basically this process
Speaker 2: where we grow the structures, these microscopic patterns. So again,
Speaker 2: these ridges space about half the width of human hair.
Speaker 2: We grow them with lights, so we get a material
Speaker 2: that cures when it's hit by a ultraviolet light. We
Speaker 2: lay down a layer of this material. It will remain
Speaker 2: liquid or uncured until it's exposed, and then we have
Speaker 2: an optical system that projects that sharkskin patent into the
Speaker 2: surface and grows the structures from the bottom up. The
Speaker 2: reason why I'm being particular on that point is what's
Speaker 2: distinct from typical three D printing is three D printing
Speaker 2: is usually really two D printing done over and over again.
Speaker 2: You print a layer in two D and then you
Speaker 2: do it so on and so forth. We actually can
Speaker 2: print entire three D structures only at the microscale in
Speaker 2: a single exposure step through this process in this effect.
Speaker 1: So explain drag and how exactly this thing reduces drag.
Speaker 2: So drag is the force that a body moving through
Speaker 2: a fluid experiences. So a shark has to expend energy
Speaker 2: to push through the water, or a plane has to
Speaker 2: burn fuel to push through the air. If you can
Speaker 2: reduce that drag, you can reduce amount of energy that
Speaker 2: you have to burn. The way that these structures work,
Speaker 2: it's counterintuitive. Usually a smoother surface is better when it
Speaker 2: comes to reducing drag. But what sharks have worked out
Speaker 2: is if you have these specific ridge designs, you can
Speaker 2: interact with a phenomenon that's known as hepinvortices. So if
Speaker 2: you zoom down to that microscopic scale in what's called
Speaker 2: turbulent flow, so when the flow is all messy, which
Speaker 2: is most of the flow that anything experiences, especially planes.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one visual is an incense stick.
Speaker 1: If you burn it in a closed room, you get
Speaker 1: this nice stream. If you move your hand around it
Speaker 1: and it just becomes chaotic, and that's kind of turbulance.
Speaker 2: Right, exactly right. So when it's all nice, clean streams
Speaker 2: of smoke, you can see, that's lamina flow, where everything's
Speaker 2: ordered and predictable. And then eventually, if you wait long enough,
Speaker 2: the top of that will get all messy and swell around,
Speaker 2: and that's turbulent flow. Now, on a plane or on
Speaker 2: a shark, most of the flow is turbulent flow. And
Speaker 2: if you zoom in small enough, there are these very
Speaker 2: predictable structures called hairpin vortices. They're kind of in the
Speaker 2: shape of a hairpin, funnily enough, through about the diameter
Speaker 2: of a human hair. They're very predictable according to your
Speaker 2: flow conditions, and they provide additional scrubbing and energy on
Speaker 2: that surface, which essentially means more friction drag, more drag
Speaker 2: that's applying to the surface that's moving through the fluid.
Speaker 2: But if you can make these ridges just narrower than
Speaker 2: the diameter of that vortex, then you can actually exclude
Speaker 2: it from the surface and it doesn't fit in between
Speaker 2: the ridges. And only interacts with these very sharp peaks.
Speaker 2: The result of that is that you get a net
Speaker 2: drag reduction effect because they're not actually interacting with the
Speaker 2: surface completely. Again, sharks get the credit for coming up
Speaker 2: with this idea, and it works incredibly well. So with
Speaker 2: the material that we have made to date and sort
Speaker 2: of our our current generation of product, we reliably get
Speaker 2: an eight percent friction drag saving. That'll have a different
Speaker 2: impact depending on the application, but on a typical tube
Speaker 2: and we're getting aircraft, you've got half of your drag
Speaker 2: being friction drag, so that eight percent becomes a four
Speaker 2: percent net efficiency gain, So four percent less fuel burned,
Speaker 2: four percent less carbon emissions.
Speaker 1: Well, you give sharks credit. It's not like they were
Speaker 1: thinking about it. It's just that they kept swimming in
Speaker 1: the water and the more efficient ones one out and
Speaker 1: then they got evolved into the beast that they are
Speaker 1: beautiful as they are.
Speaker 2: I can't claim to know the inner workings of shouts,
Speaker 2: but they definitely are the ones that came up with it.
Speaker 2: So whether they thought of it or.
Speaker 1: Not, so what kind of impact do you think you
Speaker 1: can have?
Speaker 2: So today global aviation spends about turning to billion dollars
Speaker 2: on fuel, producing about a billion tons of carbon, and
Speaker 2: we could be with our current products saving up to
Speaker 2: about four percent of that. On individual, say wide body aircraft,
Speaker 2: we can be saving on the order of a million
Speaker 2: dollars of fuel a year and three thousand tons of carbon.
Speaker 2: And that's where we're currently at. And the other thing,
Speaker 2: which which I referred to when I showed you the
Speaker 2: lab and the tour, we really want to leverage the
Speaker 2: fact that we can make new designs and improve those savings.
Speaker 2: And we also work with the University of Melbourne. They'll
Speaker 2: be building us a dedicated testing facility so we can
Speaker 2: start rapidly iterating the different designs that we can make,
Speaker 2: test them in the testing facility and improve that performance.
Speaker 2: And we're nowhere near any sort of physical limit as
Speaker 2: to what kind of efficiency gains we can be getting
Speaker 2: when it comes to functional surfaces and how we can
Speaker 2: improve the efficiency of aviation. So we want to push
Speaker 2: that up closer to ten percent.
Speaker 1: And what will be required to pass what would be
Speaker 1: a pretty strict regulatory environment.
Speaker 2: Yes, so you're right. Aviation is a highly regulated industry,
Speaker 2: which is great. That's why we're safely flying on planes
Speaker 2: and not worrying about them falling out of the sky,
Speaker 2: and so we need to make sure that we fit
Speaker 2: within that regulatory process. We have a great model for
Speaker 2: how we can get onto aircraft, which is the graphical
Speaker 2: films are referred to earlier, so they're already films that
Speaker 2: are up to spec and applied to aircraft and flown
Speaker 2: on aircraft regularly. So we're installing in the same procedures,
Speaker 2: the same way, the same kinds of materials and passing
Speaker 2: those material specs and that's the method that we're using
Speaker 2: for we've got some upcoming flight trials, so we just
Speaker 2: had a project announced with some funding from the Australian
Speaker 2: through government, which is in partnership with Jetstar, which is
Speaker 2: our biggest low cost carrier here in Australia, and so
Speaker 2: we're taking that approach by using their existing framework of
Speaker 2: how they get films on and that's great for the
Speaker 2: purpose of flight trials and initial applications. When it comes
Speaker 2: to launching this and putting this on many aircraft and
Speaker 2: really having the impact that we want to have, we'll
Speaker 2: be getting what's called a supplemental type certificate, which is
Speaker 2: an approved change to an existing aircraft.
Speaker 1: And these films which they put on for advertising, etc.
Speaker 1: They take them off after a year or two. If
Speaker 1: that you're going to have to keep them on planes
Speaker 1: which last ten to twenty.
Speaker 2: Years, Yes and no, you're correct. The graphical films are
Speaker 2: typically removed within say a year or so, but there
Speaker 2: are products out there that have flown for over eight years,
Speaker 2: so there is precedent in terms of having them on
Speaker 2: for longer. That's about the period of time that we
Speaker 2: want our product to last. And the reason we're not
Speaker 2: looking at longer than that is there are very well
Speaker 2: defined maintenance checks that are done on aircraft for the
Speaker 2: same reason and of keeping them safe. And you'll have
Speaker 2: a heavy maintenance check, which depending on the aircraft and
Speaker 2: how it's operated, could be every five to ten years,
Speaker 2: and that's where all of the paint will be stripped
Speaker 2: off the plane and will be checked down to the
Speaker 2: core structure of the plane and then it will be repainted.
Speaker 2: So lasting any longer than that is not really relevant
Speaker 2: for our product, but you're right, we definitely want to
Speaker 2: make sure that we're lasting that period of time. The
Speaker 2: business case is still very much attractive even if it
Speaker 2: was only a two year product. But we're looking to
Speaker 2: make that last as long as possible again to have
Speaker 2: that impact.
Speaker 1: And on the dour we saw the lab and the
Speaker 1: testing facility. It's relatively small for what you need to
Speaker 1: do now, but where are you going to manufacture at
Speaker 1: scale if you're going to cover entire planes with this material?
Speaker 2: Yes, so the facility that you saw here today that
Speaker 2: core technology. We talked about the way that we manufacture
Speaker 2: and essentially what we develop here are the materials and
Speaker 2: kind of the key manufacturing inputs to manufacture large amounts
Speaker 2: of product at scale. Those inputs go to a continuous
Speaker 2: role for roll manufacturing process and we currently work with
Speaker 2: different third party manufacturers where we go and have access
Speaker 2: to their existing production lines. We're about to know the
Speaker 2: production run on the order of say a commu's worth material,
Speaker 2: which is plenty for us to do a couple of
Speaker 2: flight trials. And then when it comes to scaling up
Speaker 2: that manufacturing first, our first manufacturing scale facility will be
Speaker 2: here in Australia. But the volumes that we're talking about
Speaker 2: we expect to be building these in locations in the
Speaker 2: geography is where close to the markets that we need
Speaker 2: to ultimately serve. So so we'll have something in Europe,
Speaker 2: something in the US. Is how we'll do this in
Speaker 2: the long term.
Speaker 1: The applications, though, don't have to be just restricted to aplanes.
Speaker 1: Drag is a problem for all sorts of things, anything
Speaker 1: that moves really, whether it's in water or on the road.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. Obviously, we're focused on aviation at
Speaker 2: the moment, and there is a reason for that. Aviation
Speaker 2: is very hard to abate industry. There's a trillion dollars
Speaker 2: of planes flying today which aren't going to be thrown
Speaker 2: away anytime soon, earning about two hundred million dollars worth
Speaker 2: of fuel and producing about a billion tons of carbon.
Speaker 2: So we're getting very clear signals that this is a
Speaker 2: problem that the market wants us to solve first. But
Speaker 2: we're also looking at other applications further down the line,
Speaker 2: so we can be applying this to ships, say cargo ships,
Speaker 2: to improve their efficiency as well. I had a couple
Speaker 2: of other things, yes, because I listened to your episode
Speaker 2: about flying cars. I listened to that and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's probably why you want to talk to us, because
Speaker 2: you're skeptical about the transition of aviation to electric Exactly
Speaker 2: and I think that's a big part of what we're
Speaker 2: trying to solve, something which I think is why we're
Speaker 2: getting a lot of traction in aviation. The entire industry
Speaker 2: is committed to net zero by twenty fifty, and there
Speaker 2: is not a clear easy shot to get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that's true for many industries, but particularly
Speaker 1: true for our aviation.
Speaker 2: Yes, and even your colleague you were talking to said
Speaker 2: he's bullish on electric aviation and hydroen aviation and best
Speaker 2: case scenario that solves short and medium whole flight, there
Speaker 2: is no way that it's going to be doing wide
Speaker 2: body along whul flights. But the other thing, and the
Speaker 2: reason why I made reference to the fact there's about
Speaker 2: a trillion dollars worth of planes burning fuel and operation today,
Speaker 2: not to mention all the planes that are being manufactured
Speaker 2: still to be burning fuel, is we need to think
Speaker 2: about something which has an impact in the next five
Speaker 2: to ten years. We can't just sort of hold on
Speaker 2: for a new breakthrough in battery or hydrogen technology. I
Speaker 2: think it's very necessary and very excited for those things
Speaker 2: to come online, but it's an even longer regulatory road
Speaker 2: to get new platforms.
Speaker 1: Off for sure. And even if you do get electric
Speaker 1: and hydrogen planes working, any amount of efficiency gain that
Speaker 1: you get for them, the easier their job becomes because
Speaker 1: then you have to put fewer batteries on, you have
Speaker 1: to put less fuel on. So efficiency is this weapon
Speaker 1: that few people think off or use as effectively as
Speaker 1: you can use to get to net zero.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I think where we're coming at this
Speaker 2: is in the near term, we want to have an
Speaker 2: impact on the existing global fleet. You know, every airline's
Speaker 2: committed to say one half percent efficiency gains the plane,
Speaker 2: just buy new planes. We can be a part of
Speaker 2: that solution to not only help them achieve that, but
Speaker 2: save money in the process. You're not paying a grain premium,
Speaker 2: you're saving fuel in the process. But as electric and hydrogen,
Speaker 2: you know, alternative powered aviation comes online, they'll be doing
Speaker 2: really short hops initially, and if maybe an extra five
Speaker 2: percent efficiency unlocks La to San Francisco, there's a huge
Speaker 2: impact there and we really want to be able to
Speaker 2: help with that transition as we have these alternative aviation
Speaker 2: platforms coming online.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for the tour. Nice to see sharks in
Speaker 1: a better light than a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Think Sharks are great.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Since recording this interview, Microtower has begun flight trials
Speaker 1: off its technology and plans for it to be rolled
Speaker 1: out more broadly on commercial jets in twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: after the break. To meet net zero, we need enough
Speaker 1: batteries for a billion electric cars and lithium is a
Speaker 1: crucial part of that equation. Is there a cleaner way
Speaker 1: to source it? While I was in Australia, I also
Speaker 1: met up with Stephen vas Ludis, CEO of Novalith, a
Speaker 1: company that wants to reduce the carbon emissions that come
Speaker 1: from extracting lithium. Like Microtao, Novallyith is another company that
Speaker 1: has raised money with the support of the Clean Energy
Speaker 1: Finance Corporation, first two point five million Australian dollars in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, and then it completed a twenty three
Speaker 1: million dollar rais. I met Stephen at the Novlith office
Speaker 1: in Sydney. Now we're going to talk about lithium mining
Speaker 1: and what it is that Novalith, your company is doing
Speaker 1: to make it more efficient and even maybe carbon negative,
Speaker 1: which is a bold claim. But before that, how do
Speaker 1: you come to do this?
Speaker 3: So in terms of I guess the origin story. Sam
Speaker 3: chemical engineer by background. I worked in a number of
Speaker 3: industries prior to novelith oil and gas, conventional chemical engineering,
Speaker 3: you know, try to make things cleaner and greener, and
Speaker 3: that's really been the big push for me over the
Speaker 3: last decade or so, and that's what led to the
Speaker 3: genesis of Novel Earth. Looking at the way the world
Speaker 3: is moving, right, we desperately need to electrify. The only
Speaker 3: way for us to do that is by using lithium
Speaker 3: at large scale, and the conventional means of lithium production
Speaker 3: are not particularly quick, clean, or cost effective.
Speaker 1: Well, most people won't know this because most people haven't
Speaker 1: thought about lithium mining. They've thought about lithium's used in
Speaker 1: batteries because everybody has a smartphone and they have lithium
Speaker 1: in batteries.
Speaker 3: And now EV's is a big push as well.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. But let's go from the basics of how
Speaker 1: lithium is mined and processed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in terms of lithium, you have kind of
Speaker 3: two main sources of lithium. So you have your contentle brands,
Speaker 3: So the lithium triangle in South America, so that's Argentina, Chiliblivia.
Speaker 1: And that's basically liquids that are found under the Earth,
Speaker 1: which are very highly concentrated in different types of salts,
Speaker 1: including lithium in them. Correct, And so you just pull
Speaker 1: out a lot of liquid, you put it in these
Speaker 1: salt pans, let them dry, take what's left, which is
Speaker 1: usually some type of powder, and then make chemicals out
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 3: Exactly. That's very much your Brian's right. They, you know,
Speaker 3: take their lithium chloride powder or slurry ship off to
Speaker 3: China to refine into a lithium chemical. The other way
Speaker 3: of getting lithium is from rock, and so the vast
Speaker 3: majority of kind of rock based lithium, so about sixty
Speaker 3: percent of the world supply comes from Western Australia in
Speaker 3: the form of spodymene, and that's a hard rock. There's
Speaker 3: other sources of lithium so soft rocks, such in North
Speaker 3: America and Europe, but the vast majority at the moment
Speaker 3: is from that hard rock based resource.
Speaker 1: And we've got some SPoD being here that you showed me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've not been to a lithium mind, but
Speaker 1: the pieces of rock you're showing me are all different colored,
Speaker 1: like there's green and there's white, and there's purple and
Speaker 1: even yellow. I thought mine rocks would look lamer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I think we're actually in a pretty cool
Speaker 3: game with the lithium rocks. Lithium rocks generally all look
Speaker 3: quite pretty, and there's one hundred and one different types
Speaker 3: of kind of lithium bearing ores. They all look pretty cool,
Speaker 3: I mean, except maybe the clays. The clays are I
Speaker 3: guess a bit boring, right, They just look like a clay.
Speaker 1: And so you take either rock or brine, and then
Speaker 1: what do you have to do next?
Speaker 3: So the conventional process is, you know, once you've kind
Speaker 3: of mind it, you've then concentrated to increase the amount
Speaker 3: of lithium from you know, so you're one or two
Speaker 3: percent to say five or six percent. You then ship
Speaker 3: that spodyman concentrate to China, and about you know, eighty
Speaker 3: to ninety ten of the world's lithium is currently refined
Speaker 3: in China or roads lead to China in the lithium
Speaker 3: game at the moment, and I think the world is
Speaker 3: trying to change that, but it'll take a little while
Speaker 3: for that to pick up. But yeah, so once it
Speaker 3: gets to the the lithium refinery, depending on the source
Speaker 3: of lithium. There's a quite a complicated and long winded
Speaker 3: chemical process, but in a nutshell, you heat it up,
Speaker 3: you hit it with a very very strong acid. So
Speaker 3: sulfuric acid, sulfuric acid us A SULFORG generally comes off
Speaker 3: the back of oil and gas, right desulfurization.
Speaker 1: Just so people know, sulfuric acid is one of the
Speaker 1: strongest acids there is.
Speaker 3: Definitely, Yes, it's not something you really want to leave
Speaker 3: out in the kitchen table. And if you're working with it,
Speaker 3: I mean there's a lot of safety considerations that you
Speaker 3: need to take into account. And again that's one of
Speaker 3: the things that we're trying to move away from, is
Speaker 3: in terms of using quite a harmful chemical, not only
Speaker 3: for personnel but also from the environment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even though lithium mindes are located in places with
Speaker 1: relatively high concentrations, lithium only makes up a small percentage
Speaker 1: of all the material that is dug up. Steve told
Speaker 1: me it's only a few kilograms for every thousand kilograms
Speaker 1: of mind material. So to separate the lithium you want
Speaker 1: from the materials you don't want, miners use sulfuric acid.
Speaker 1: It does the job because it's highly chemically reactive. But
Speaker 1: that also creates a whole bunch of other problems. First,
Speaker 1: it's not selective, which means other metals contained in the
Speaker 1: mind material are also extracted alongside lithium, creating a complex
Speaker 1: chemical soup that you have to further purify. Second, it's toxic,
Speaker 1: so managing it and getting rid of a way safely
Speaker 1: is expensive. Nobile It's idea is to do a way
Speaker 1: with sulfuric acid altogether and use carbonic acid instead, which
Speaker 1: can be made by mixing CO two with water.
Speaker 3: So when you mix CO two in water, you form
Speaker 3: carbonic acid. It's the same thing you're using a soda
Speaker 3: stream at home. Yeah, right, but you don't think of
Speaker 3: it as an acid, right. You can drink it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but if you drink too much soda, your teeth
Speaker 1: go bad, and that's because it's acidic.
Speaker 3: Correct, correct, So don't drink too much soda as a
Speaker 3: general kind of like health this claim hehet. But yeah,
Speaker 3: you don't worry about the kids playing with it. You
Speaker 3: make it, and it's great to have with a slice
Speaker 3: of lemon. But under the right conditions, we can actually
Speaker 3: use that SEO too. Water mixture very very effectively and
Speaker 3: efficiently to extract lithium from the lithium bearing oles directly
Speaker 3: as a lithium carbonate. And that's kind of like the
Speaker 3: little Noblis black box and our pattern.
Speaker 1: The lithium used inside lithium ion batteries isn't pure lithium. Instead,
Speaker 1: it exists as a salt, either lithium hydroxide or what
Speaker 1: nouvlid makes lithium carbonate. In using carbonic acid to turn
Speaker 1: mind lithium to lithium carbonate, the startup can skip over
Speaker 1: the step where sulfuric acid is normally used. Because carbonic
Speaker 1: acid is a weak acid. It also produces less toxic waste,
Speaker 1: and what waste it does produce is much easier and
Speaker 1: thus cheaper to handle safely. However, to make a weak
Speaker 1: acid work as effectively as a strong acid, nouvlith had
Speaker 1: to design a different process of extraction. So you have
Speaker 1: the black box. Yes that's the IP, but it's patented
Speaker 1: so you can talk about what's public right, what is it? Yees?
Speaker 3: So I mean I feel free to look up for
Speaker 3: those of you who do enjoy digging in patterns. If
Speaker 3: you imagine putting a little bit of spodgyman in a
Speaker 3: glass subside one on the table. Not very much is
Speaker 3: going to happen, right, you will form lithium carbonate. But
Speaker 3: we'll be talking about this inside three is time. And
Speaker 3: so with that process, the way we've managed to do
Speaker 3: this and ast you found that it works really really
Speaker 3: well is by changing temperatures and pressures, and so under
Speaker 3: a very strict set of conditions, we find that we
Speaker 3: can very effectively extract that lithium. And the other thing
Speaker 3: we've looked into is the type of reactors that we're
Speaker 3: looking to use. So going to you know, chemical engineering again,
Speaker 3: there's one hundred and one way to do something. We
Speaker 3: found for our process that a fluidized bed reactor works
Speaker 3: really really well. We can get great extraction efficiencies and
Speaker 3: control that mass transfer, which is what we're.
Speaker 1: As bad reactor, which is a chemical engineer. I know
Speaker 1: what it is, but now that I think about it,
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting name because it sounds like a
Speaker 1: massage table.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, well it's to be fun like you can
Speaker 3: kind of imagine it, right, So if you get a
Speaker 3: straw and you kind of blow bubbles at the bottom
Speaker 3: of a glass fall with a bit of sand, right,
Speaker 3: you're effectively making a fluidized bed reactor, and so you
Speaker 3: can see the bubbles kind of passing through the sand
Speaker 3: and it's all kind of jiggling about and doing its thing.
Speaker 3: And that's really what we're doing, just a large.
Speaker 1: Scale massaging the spodamine with lots of acid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, to get our lithium carbonate.
Speaker 1: But you also made this bold claim saying well we
Speaker 1: can make carbon negative lithium, which you're going to have
Speaker 1: to explain. So a, what is the carbon cost of lithium?
Speaker 1: Why is there a carbon cost to lithium, and how
Speaker 1: is it that you're going to negated?
Speaker 3: Yes, so in terms of that, well, we're currently doing
Speaker 3: able to work on confirming whether we can truly be
Speaker 3: carbon negative. Well, that's definitely our goal. Given that way
Speaker 3: use COO too. You know, there's a really good chance
Speaker 3: of us us achieving that goal. And so in terms
Speaker 3: of I guess the relative carbon intensity, right, if you
Speaker 3: look at the conventional process, you find that the vast
Speaker 3: majority of CO two is emitted in that middle piece,
Speaker 3: so the chemical refining piece.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. People would think mining it, which requires
Speaker 1: a lot of energy and moving it then putting it
Speaker 1: either on trains or ships, would be the biggest carbon cost.
Speaker 1: But actually it's the chemicals. It's the treatment of the
Speaker 1: ore that is really the carbon intensive.
Speaker 3: Definitely, and it's the productions of the chemicals. So in
Speaker 3: the production of the softior acid you need for your process,
Speaker 3: you're producing a ton of CO two. And so when
Speaker 3: we compare novelist technology to the conventional, you know, and
Speaker 3: the conventional sitting between say fifteen and two tons of
Speaker 3: CO two putun of lithium chemical and it is jurisdic
Speaker 3: and specific. We were less than half of that, and
Speaker 3: it's already you know, well on the way to being
Speaker 3: carbon neutral, carbon negative.
Speaker 1: Yeah, still ways of the carbon negative. Part of Novolid's
Speaker 1: claim is still just theory. Carbonic acid can be made
Speaker 1: by mixing water with CO two that has been captured
Speaker 1: from the atmosphere. The acid can be combined with waste
Speaker 1: metals from the lithium or to form carbonates that can
Speaker 1: be stored underground, effectively locking the CO two out of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere forever. This is something that is already being
Speaker 1: done by carbon removal companies climb Works and carb Fix
Speaker 1: in Iceland at a small scale. So the theory does work,
Speaker 1: but to make carbon negative lithium novolith will have to
Speaker 1: store away more carbon dioxide than produced by the rest
Speaker 1: of the process. And I'll remain skeptical till I see
Speaker 1: the results.
Speaker 3: So for SPoD, you mean the way we can reduce
Speaker 3: the carbon intensities by using grhinoisols the power grenoil electricity.
Speaker 3: At the moment, everything is coal diesel. I mean it's
Speaker 3: really dirty in terms of the power. Looking forward, we
Speaker 3: can significantly decrease the carbon intensity by using greener sources
Speaker 3: of energy. And then further that if we do have
Speaker 3: these carbonatable materials right, so effectively the spent or the
Speaker 3: stuff that goes to waste, if we can add value
Speaker 3: to that by carbonating that using either COO two emitted
Speaker 3: by the power plant that the mine is they're currently
Speaker 3: using to powers operations. There's a lot of conventional industry
Speaker 3: that needs a place to put its coe too, and
Speaker 3: we can help them store that zo too, infects that
Speaker 3: too whilst producing a very very important and high value
Speaker 3: lithium chemical product.
Speaker 1: And you should acknowledge that while lithium has a carbon
Speaker 1: cost and it's substantial, the amount of carbonate avoids through
Speaker 1: the use of batteries and electric vehicles is much much greater.
Speaker 1: But if you're going to scale green technologies, we ought
Speaker 1: to be much more careful about the carbon cost of
Speaker 1: building those technologies.
Speaker 3: I completely agree, and that's what we need lithium, right
Speaker 3: if you're looking through relative carbon reduction or the gatement
Speaker 3: if you like, of transitioning towards an extory future. I
Speaker 3: mean it is gigatons, several gig times. It is tremendous,
Speaker 3: and we need to get there.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Our thesis is we need lithium, We need now, well yesterday,
Speaker 3: to be honest, and we need to cost effectively, but
Speaker 3: it has to be environmently friendly. There's no point in
Speaker 3: using technologies which really kind of use the bones of
Speaker 3: old dinosaurs right to kind of prop up the screen future.
Speaker 3: And so that's what we have to try and make
Speaker 3: it sustainable as possible, so you know, really be part
Speaker 3: of that same ethos that we're kind of pushing towards.
Speaker 1: And so we've got a tour of your facility and
Speaker 1: you've done this at a lab scale that you're making
Speaker 1: kilograms of this on a day to day basis, but
Speaker 1: of course we're talking tons here, and so how many
Speaker 1: years before we have thousands of tons in production using
Speaker 1: this method.
Speaker 3: So we're sitting at kind of like keylot scale, right.
Speaker 3: We've done our lab and bench stop testing and that's
Speaker 3: taken us two years to get to the stage where
Speaker 3: we're not confident in scaling up to our pilot plants.
Speaker 3: And so this year we while we're currently building our
Speaker 3: pilot plant facility in Alexandria and City in Australia, and
Speaker 3: we'll have multiple pilot plants on side seeing tens of
Speaker 3: kilos of lithium chemical per day. So if things go
Speaker 3: the way that we were planning them to, we will
Speaker 3: have our first facility, our commercial administration plant operating by
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, and then scale of
Speaker 3: that'll be between you know, one and five thousand tons pernum.
Speaker 1: And where will it be based?
Speaker 3: Very good question. So if you're looking at where lithium
Speaker 3: is primarily based, a Western Australia has a tremendous amount
Speaker 3: of spodyman but the US, right, the US is pushing
Speaker 3: very very hard into on shoring it's critical mineral supply
Speaker 3: and really supporting this battery production in our electric future.
Speaker 3: And at this stage it's looking like either US. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of local quality lithum resources and tons of
Speaker 3: lithium in general, which the need to find a better
Speaker 3: way to process a Western Australia, which is where the
Speaker 3: vast majority of kind of the hard rockithum comes from
Speaker 3: at the moment. There's a lot of support from the
Speaker 3: government in the US, which is very attractive for not
Speaker 3: only US but anybody looking to hasten that transition. And
Speaker 3: so if we can get support from the US, and
Speaker 3: given the credituality of lithium in general, think we will
Speaker 3: be able to it makes a lot of sense for us.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you and good luck scaling up.
Speaker 3: No, thanks very much for having me. It was great.
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