Raw Nickel Dust The CEO of FPX Nickel, Martin Turenne, concurred with Musk: mineral processing can be made cleaner and more economical.
"The current methods of processing [nickel] are generally well established, and they're done for a reason, because they work and because alternatives would be costly or they're at an unproven stage," said Turenne in an interview with Kitco after he watched Tesla's Battery Day presentation.
At his own FPX, Turenne believes his nickel is in a form that would be suitable for batteries with the potential to skip the smelting step.
Musk and Bragnila imagine Tesla factories processing raw nickel powder for processing.
"Raw materials from a mine go to the plant and out comes a battery," said Bragnila. "We are just consuming the raw nickel powder. It dramalitcally simplifies the raw nickel refining part of the whole process. We can eliminate billions in battery grade nickel intermediate production. It is not needed at all."
What struck Turenne during the presentation is the forecast level of demand.
"At three terawatt-hours of battery cells per annum by 2030, that would entail approximately annual consumption of 2 million tonnes of nickel. That's almost the entire scale of the current global nickel output," said Turenne.