POSCO Group’s new Lithium Hydroxide (LHM) plant in Güemes, Argentina, in which a total of more than one billion dollars has been invested, has a production capacity of 25,000 tons of lithium hydroxide per year – enough for 800,000 EV battery packs – and has positioned itself as a benchmark project for the entire Latin American region.
GEA evaporation and crystallization technology is at the heart of the plant. The lithium hydroxide production facility is the fifth lithium salt production plant that GEA has supplied to the POSCO Group. For POSCO, which claims to be the fourth largest steel producer in the world, the GEA plants are an important milestone towards its strategic goal of becoming one of the three largest lithium producers in the world by 2030.
GEA’s customized LS/LH crystallization technology, high quality and excellent service contributed significantly to the successful completion of the plant. This was emphasized at the inauguration ceremony where GEA’s crystallization team was awarded with a recognition.
The process developed from scratch by GEA for POSCO in Argentina is unique. It was developed to POSCO’s exact specifications to ensure maximum uptime and performance and minimum waste and energy consumption, while delivering consistently high-quality lithium hydroxide crystals. It began with laboratory testing to determine the key physical properties of the components involved, corrosion testing to determine the best material of construction and the development of a process solution that was validated in GEA’s semi-industrial pilot plant. As a result, POSCO was provided by GEA with a complete development and scale-up of the appropriate evaporation, stripping and crystallization process to withstand the specific corrosive process conditions, combined with various GEA benchmark technologies.
