Levidian called in to maximise Canadian CleanTech opportunity
Montreal company Strategic Resources Inc. is deploying Levidian’s patented LOOP decarbonisation technology to study supplying the Project's metallurgical facility – owned by Strategic – in Saguenay, Québec.
The collaboration enables Strategic to accelerate its hydrogen development roadmap and move towards producing near emissions-free iron products for use in electric arc furnaces and steel plants.
Levidian's LOOP system captures the carbon from methane to produce hydrogen and has a unique net cost advantage over other hydrogen production technologies due to graphene, a valuable by-product that can be used to boost the performance of batteries, superconductors, solar cells, and electronics.
The collaboration sets a path towards Levidian providing the design for the LOOP system and the LOOP modules as well as the strategic plan for the marketing of the graphene via offtake.
The LOOP system was commercialised out of Cambridge University and is already being deployed to multiple locations globally across multiple industries.
The BlackRock Project's leased industrial site at Port Saguenay, Québec provides an ideal location to deploy LOOP. Strategic can utilise hydrogen to significantly reduce GHG emissions in the event the company moves forward with plans to install a four million tonne iron ore pellet operation as the first phase of the BlackRock Project.
Additional modules of the technology could also be deployed in subsequent phases of the project. Strategic has an established business footprint in Québec and Levidian's supply of LOOP for the BlackRock Project is well-suited for all stakeholders and the North American market.
BlackRock is a fully integrated, environmentally enhanced, metals and materials manufacturing project from its wholly-owned vanadium and titanium bearing magnetite (VTM) deposit. The mine and concentrator portion of the Project is located approximately 700 km north of Montréal, and 20 km southeast of Chibougamau, Québec on traditional Cree lands within the James Bay Territory.
The metallurgical facility portion of the project is located at Port Saguenay, a federal deep sea port and industrial park with access to the St. Lawrence Seaway.
The project includes what will be the first VTM mine in North America and one of the lowest carbon emitting metallurgical plants in the world. The plant is designed to be green hydrogen ready and BlackRock’s plans call for these critical and strategic minerals to be transformed into green products used by industry to produce high quality metal alloys and advanced batteries, reducing the global greenhouse gas emissions of producing such products.
