NORAM Electrolysis Systems has garnered public capital, the Vancouver-based clean technology innovator known as NESI announced this week.
NESI secured a total of $5.6 million in funding from the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia.
The capital aims to support NESI’s role in building electrochemical infrastructure for cleaner lithium refining and better battery supply chains, according to a statement from the Canadian cleantech company.
Three million dollars in federal funding hails from The National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program, while $2.6M comes from the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions’ Innovative Clean Energy fund.
“We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through NRC IRAP as well as the support of the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions,” remarked NESI chief executive officer Jeremy Moulson.
Moulson says the funding “helps accelerate a technology platform we believe is essential to the future of cleaner industrial processing.”
“Refining remains one of the biggest constraints in the battery supply chain,” the entrepreneur posits, “and NESI is replacing conventional reagent-intensive processes with electrified technology that lowers emissions, recovers value from waste streams and enables more resilient critical minerals supply chains.”
The government support “allows us to advance our platform here in British Columbia while strengthening Canada’s role in the global battery materials economy,” he stated.
Built on decades of electrochemical engineering expertise, NESI develops electrified processing systems that reduce reliance on traditional chemical-intensive methods, which enables lower-carbon production of battery materials.
The company’s NORSCAND platform is designed to produce high-purity lithium hydroxide from lithium chloride and lithium sulphate feedstocks, and also allows for the recovery of acid and caustic from existing industrial waste streams.
Minister of Industry Mélanie Joly says NESI is “developing transformative ways to refine critical minerals.”
“Investing in this technology will strengthen our domestic battery supply chains and position Canada as a leader in the net-zero economy,” she believes.
Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson says that NESI is part of “the next generation of low-carbon technologies that will strengthen domestic supply chains, reduce reliance on foreign processing, create good jobs, and help unlock Canada’s full potential as a trusted supplier of sovereign, secure critical minerals.”
Last month, NESI alongside Vulcan Energy Resources began construction on the Central Lithium Plant at Infraserv Industrial Park Höchst in Frankfurt.
The forthcoming facility is part of Vulcan’s Lionheart Project, which will use NORAM’s proprietary NORSCAND electrolysis technology to convert lithium chloride into battery-quality lithium hydroxide monohydrate, a critical material used in electric vehicle batteries.
The project is targeting a production capacity of 24,000 tonnes of LHM annually, enough for approximately 500,000 electric vehicle batteries per year.
For NORAM, the Lionheart Project represents a real-world deployment of its electrochemical platform in the global battery materials supply chain, with commercial production of the facility targeted for 2028.