Century Lithium (LCE.V) has provided a metallurgical update on its flagship Clayton Valley lithium project in Nevada. The pilot plant has been up and running for a while, and Century Lithium has been able to consistently produce high purity lithium carbonate with a recent average purity of 99.87%. That’s good news but even more interesting is the comment from CEO Willoughby stating that there is a five-fold increase in the lithium grade in the concentrated solution generated at the pilot plant. This should be a cost-saving measure as lower volumes of lithium-bearing solution would have to be processed, and Century Lithium points at Koch’s Li-Pro technology as one of the main factors to achieve this.
The higher lithium grade in the solution indeed means that less water will have to be evaporated prior to the precipitation of the lithium carbonate. Additional work is ongoing to further optimize the flow sheet based on these new data points. In its press release, Century Lithium mentioned these improvements are ‘supplemental’ to the feasibility study, but Century has not yet put forward an updated completion date for the feasibility study.
The image above shows the results from the Saltworks metallurgical test work on the samples shipped by Century Lithium and as you can see, the average reported purity grade is very consistent: whereas a grade of 99.875% was obtained in the first batch, the second batch is almost an exact replica with 99.871%. And both results handsomely meet the battery-grade lithium requirement of 99.5%.
The project appears to work on a pilot plant scale and we are now waiting to see the results of the feasibility study as that will ultimately determine the path forward for the project.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in Century Lithium. Century is a sponsor of the website. Please read our disclaimer.
