THE KOREA ECONOMIC DAILY, GLOBAL EDITION

POSCO Holdings Inc., said on Thursday it has developed a key material used for recovering lithium from ore and saltwater jointly with WSK, a South Korean battery material producer.

The two companies are the first in Korea to develop electrodialysis membranes and it means POSCO can source the material domestically.

POSCO, under the steel-focused POSCO Group, has so far imported all its supply of electrodialysis membranes from Japan.
 
POSCO and WSK in 2021 embarked on the joint development of the material.

WSK manufactures separator membranes for lithium-ion batteries, based on its original high-polymer film manufacturing technology.

A separator is a critical component of lithium-ion batteries since it provides a physical barrier between the positive and negative electrodes.

POSCO will supply the electrodialysis membranes to its lithium hydroxide plant under construction in Gwangyang, South Jeolla Province, from 2024.

It will also apply the material in the desalination process for lithium at its lithium hydroxide facility completed in Argentina last month. It extracts the metal from the Hombre Muerto salt lake in the country after it purchased the lake in 2018.
 
POSCO said the joint development of the electrodialysis membrane will cut manufacturing costs and stabilize its supply chain for secondary battery materials, while reducing the time between product order and delivery.

Once the two lithium processing plants are up and running, they will be capable of extracting 43,000-ton lithium from ore and 50,000 tons of the metal from salt water per year.

The electrodialysis membrane utilizes POSCO's original technology for the electrodialysis process used to extract lithium.

The process does not generate byproducts and allows for the recycling of secondary raw materials, thus lowering maintenance costs.

Write to Mi-Sun Kang at missunny@hankyung.com

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.