Rain Carbon (RAIN), a global leader in upcycling of industrial by-products to high value carbon materials, has announced a 30,000 sq. ft. industrial facility in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to serve as the location for the new RAIN Innovation Center for Energy Storage Materials, marking another significant step in the company's commitment to advancing sustainable energy storage material solutions.

The R&D center consists of a demonstration facility, allowing pilot-scale processing of carbon and carbon precursor materials, and laboratories dedicated to the carbon material analysis with state-of-the-art analytical and electrochemical testing equipment.

The R&D center will facilitate the testing and application development of RAIN's LIONCOAT thermoplastic precursor products used for enhancing the electrochemical performance of battery anode materials. In addition, the facility will support the development and commercialization of new, innovative energy storage material solutions based on natural and synthetic graphite as well as silicon-carbon composites for lithium-ion batteries. The center will also house the product innovations for carbonaceous materials tailored to emerging energy storage technologies such as solid-state batteries, sodium-ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells.

Equipment installation is already underway, with the start-up of the demonstration facility scheduled to commence in the first quarter of 2025.

"Our new R&D center is the natural, next step to bring together RAIN's battery materials and high-purity carbon businesses, which are well established in the energy storage materials sector in both Europe and Asia," said Gerry Sweeney, President of RAIN. "Our R&D teams are already known as market leaders. We aim to combine these strengths with our long-standing presence in North America to use this new facility to expand our existing list of patents and to spring-board RAIN to an even higher, more-value-added level in the evolving energy storage space."

Dr. Michael Spahr, Vice President of Innovations in RAIN's Carbon Distillation & Advanced Materials business unit, expressed enthusiasm about this R&D investment, emphasizing: "We are thrilled to expand our global R&D and Energy Storage Materials expertise. This move reaffirms our dedication to the growing North American Energy Materials supply chain while maintaining our position as an innovator on a global scale."