Commissioning the Dry Room is a major milestone in our 2MWh production facility construction, and marks a significant and complex engineering achievement.
At 220 square metres in size, the dry room is one of the largest in Australia. Its role is to eliminate moisture from the atmosphere for production processes where lithium metal and other moisture sensitive materials are exposed during cell fabrication. The large dry room space enables production equipment and teams to operate at full capacity without the restriction of inert gas enclosures or glove boxes.
Designed and built by Humiscope — a Queensland based specialist company — the dry room has a complex external infrastructure, including a large external chiller that works with European built dehumidifiers to dry the atmosphere to less than 50 PPM (parts per million) of water vapour, a dew point below -50oC. This dry air is circulated into the dry room through a maze of sealed ducting and filtration systems.
The Dry Room will house the majority of our anode production and cell fabrication equipment, which is scheduled for delivery in November. A sealed airlock is installed to enable our production teams to enter and leave the dry room while preventing the external atmosphere from contaminating the facility. The Dry Room is complemented by a clean room, which will house the phase 3 cathode and materials production equipment.
