Weekly Lithium Lowdown with Chris Williams – Week 48, 2023
Power Minerals releases PEA for its Rincon DLE project
Power Minerals released the PEA results for its Rincon project in Salta province, Argentina. The project employs SunResin DLE technology to extract ~7,000 tpa Li2CO3 over 14 years from its 292 kt LCE resource.
The estimated CAPEX came in at US$216.55M with an operating cost of US$7,786/t Li2CO3. Using an average lithium carbonate price of US$27,600/t the NPV10% post-tax came in at ~US$309M.
Adamas take: The operating costs are in the upper percentiles relative to DLE competitors, even much higher than competing Latin American companies looking at using SunResin. It is possible the especially rural location of the project is probably driving this, and/or the high sulphate contained in the brine.
Vulcan Energy launches €40M DLE Optimization plant
Vulcan Energy launched its Lithium Extraction Optimization Plant in Germany, last week.
The plant tests the brine-to-LiCl intermediate DLE flowsheet which was designed and refined from earlier pilot plants. The purpose of the plant is to optimize operational parameters, train staff and for product qualification.
The plant uses absorption-type DLE technology on a geothermal brine resource containing 181 mg/L Li. After power generation and DLE steps, reverse osmosis concentrates eluate prior to purification steps which includes ion exchange and crystallization of select impurities.
The product is a 40% lithium chloride which proceeds to a separate electrolysis and crystallization process to create lithium hydroxide.
Adamas take: Adamas had the privilege of attending the launch event last week. In short, the operational readiness of advanced DLE projects such as ZCL might catch some observers off guard as projects ramp in coming years.
