MGX receives court OK to spin out MGX Renewables

Dec 18, 2018

2018-12-18 06:44 ET – News Release

Mr. Jared Lazerson reports

MGX MINERALS RECEIVES COURT APPROVAL FOR PLAN OF ARRANGEMENT WITH MGX RENEWABLES; COMMENCES TESTING OF REGENERATOR / CHARGING MODULE

MGX Minerals Inc. has received an interim order from the Supreme Court of British Columbia in respect of the plan of arrangement with its wholly owned subsidiary MGX Renewables Inc. whereby MGX will complete a spinout of 40 per cent of the common shares of MGX Renewables pursuant to a plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) as part of a going-public transaction planned for early February, 2019.

Pursuant to the interim order, the spinout will require certain approvals by MGX shareholders at the company’s annual general and special meeting, which is expected to take place on Jan. 11, 2019. For more information on the plan of arrangement, please refer to the company’s management information circular mailed to MGX shareholders in connection with the meeting, dated Nov. 30, 2018, and its news releases dated Nov. 1, 2018, and Nov. 30, 2018, available on the company’s profile on SEDAR and on the company’s website.

ZRM-4500 zinc regeneration module

The MGXR ZRM-4500 is a zinc regeneration module that uses electricity to extract zinc particles from a potassium zincate solution. It is composed of up to 18 bipolar plates connected in series and driven from a nominal 60-volt input. The unit is constructed of Noryl plastic and magnesium alloy and is fitted with SurLok connectors for quick electrical installation. Instrumentation includes an embedded microprocessor control system and associated voltage sensors. The current configuration has a rated input power of 4.5 kilowatts, duty cycle of 80 per cent, operating life of 20,000 hours, and recharge capacity of 1.75 kilowatt-hours per hour.

Technology

The ZRM-4500 is a key component of MGXR’s unique and patented zinc-air energy storage system. In this system, energy is stored in the form of zinc particles, similar in size to grains of sand. When the system is recharging, the zinc particles are regenerated and the evolved oxygen is returned to the surrounding air by the zinc regeneration module (ZRM).

MGXR energy storage system

The MGXR ESS is a modular energy storage system designed to deliver power in the range 20 kw to 50 megawatts and storage in the range of 120 kwh to one gigawatt-hour over extended periods of time. With the advantage of rechargeable zinc-air fuel cell technology, the system can be configured to support a wide range of discharge power, recharge power and duty cycle requirements. Since the energy storage capacity of the system is determined only by the size of the fuel tank, a very cost-effective scalable solution now exists as an alternative to the linear power storage ratio in the lithium-ion battery.

Li-ion versus zinc-air

The fundamental limitation of a linear power to storage ratio and cost burden associated with both lithium ion and lack of flexibility gives an overwhelming advantage to MGXR’s zinc-air fuel cell technology. In addition to containing no expensive commodities such as lithium or cobalt, the zinc air fuel cell battery has a much lower cost of storage reflecting a paradigm shift essentially eliminating the traditional linear fixed power/storage ratio and allowing for scalable power with highly flexible storage capacity at essentially any ratio, limited only by the physical parameters of the fluidized zinc storage tank(s). The zinc-air fuel cell battery has completely decoupled power and storage subsystems with ratios of 1:5 up to 1:20 and conceptually 1:100, giving significant advantage in any scenario requiring more than a few hours of storage. This fills the need in both renewables storage as well as industry and grid-scale opportunities in power acquisition and distribution along with the inherent benefits of clean steady power; with the potential to acquire power not just overnight and discharge on demand during the day but to take advantage of much larger swings in power demand and supply such as weekly, monthly and potentially seasonal fluctuation. Charging is also flexible and is scaled to match discharge but is a separate subsystem that can be scaled to match supply markets and time frame of power availability whether long or short windows for power acquisition. This creates both an arbitrage opportunity and cost savings opportunity but a policy-level opportunity to enhance localized power infrastructure without the need to build new power plants or transmission lines.

Technology

The MGXR ESS is based upon unique and patented zinc-air fuel cell technology. Energy is stored in the form of zinc particles, similar in size to grains of sand. When the system is delivering power, the zinc particles are combined with oxygen drawn from the surrounding air. When the system is recharging, the zinc particles are regenerated and the oxygen is returned to the surrounding air.

About MGX Renewables

MGX Renewables has developed a patented zinc-air flow battery that efficiently stores energy in the form of zinc particles and contains none of the traditional high-cost battery commodities such as lithium, vanadium or cobalt. The technology allows for low-cost mass storage of energy and can be deployed into a wide range of applications scalable energy storage applications.

Unlike conventional batteries such as lithium ion, which have a fixed energy/power ratio, the technology uses a fuel tank system that offers flexible energy storage to power ratios and scalability. The storage capacity is directly tied to the size of the fuel tank and the quantity of recharged zinc fuel, making low-cost scalability a major advantage of the flow battery system. In addition, a further major advantage of the zinc-air flow battery is the ability to charge and discharge simultaneously and at different maximum charge or discharge rates since each of the charge and discharge circuits is separate and independent. Other types of standard and flow batteries are limited to a maximum charge and discharge by the total number of cells as there is no separation of the charge, discharge and storage components.

About MGX Minerals Inc.

MGX Minerals is a diversified Canadian resource and technology company with interests in global advanced material, energy and water assets.

We seek Safe Harbor.

https://www.mgxminerals.com/investors/news/2018.html