Repurposing the Sandouville refinery to nickel sulphate production
Johannesburg: Sibanye-Stillwater acquired the Sandouville nickel refinery (Sandouville refinery) in 2022 with a view to producing nickel sulphate, targeting the European battery supply chain.
Investigations into the potential for this highlighted the possible benefits of producing pre-cursor cathode active material (pCAM) by repurposing the existing Sandouville refinery chloride processing infrastructure.
As announced in March 2024, this was confirmed by a scoping study, which confirmed the encouraging potential to produce pCAM. A pre-feasibility study (PFS) is currently underway to determine the viability of producing pCAM for the European battery ecosystem through a novel, in-house process.
A positive outcome from definitive feasibility studies will enable a final investment decision on the repurposing of the Sandouville refinery to pCAM production (the GalliCam project). To date, the outlook for the GalliCam project is encouraging.
The novel process that has been conceptualised and designed by its internal team in the European region will enable pCAM to be produced directly from mixedhydroxide precipitate (MHP) in a chloride medium, allowing for fewer production steps, lower energy consumption, reduced carbon emissions, and generation of fewer waste products per tonne of pCAM compared to existing sulphate-based processing routes. Utilising this chloride-based process is expected to contribute towards competitive pCAM production costs from Sandouville.
The GalliCam project offers the Sandouville refinery an exciting brownfield alternative to leverage the existing chloride facility and skills-base into producing pCAM for the European market using a different feed source, MHP, to the nickel matte currently being refined at the Sandouville refinery.
