Lithium Energy has seen success extracting battery-grade lithium carbonate from its Solaroz project in Argentina.
The milestone is the next step in progressing the Solaroz lithium brine project to production, with samples from brine collected at the project returning 99.5 per cent lithium carbonate.
The testing was undertaken by Argentina’s Norlab SRL on a 300-litre sample of Solaroz brine extracted from a depth between 514–552m.
The sample was considered to be representative of the lithium-rich brines at Solaroz and indicated a recovery rate of up to 71 per cent.
“The production of battery-grade lithium carbonate is a highly important step in the advancement of Solaroz to production with work conducted to date providing the key design criteria inputs for the advancement of the project,” Lithium Energy said.
The company said the low magnesium/lithium ratio of the Solaroz brine has numerous benefits, including reduced reagent consumption to help enable the precipitation of boron during the liming stage, removing the need for a boron-removal processing step in the processing plant.
Alongside testing at Norlab, two new evaporation ponds were installed to support the first batch of on-site evaporation tests.
The ponds will now be cleaned and refilled for the next round of testing to assess seasonal differences as the project moves to production.
The Solaroz project is located next to Arcadium Lithium’s Olaroz lithium facility in the Salar de Olaroz basin, located in the heart of South America’s world renowned ‘Lithium Triangle’.
Lithium Energy recently upgraded its mineral resource estimate for Solaroz, with the project now containing a projected 3.3 million tonnes of lithium carbonate. This includes a high-grade core of 1.3 million tonnes of lithium carbonate.
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