Neometals Ltd {ASX: NMT} announced outstanding results of testwork on a titanium‐based adsorbent, developed by the Company, which has the potential to deliver a more cost effective and environmentally friendly method of extracting lithium and potassium from sodium rich brines as compared to traditional solar evaporation.
Successful ‘Proof of Concept’ testing of Direct Lithium and
Potassium Extraction from Brines
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Neometals Ltd {ASX: NMT} is pleased to announce outstanding results of testwork on a titanium‐based adsorbent, developed by the Company, which has the potential to deliver a more cost effective and environmentally friendly method of extracting lithium and potassium from sodium rich brines as compared to traditional solar evaporation.
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Testwork conducted by a leading independent Australian research facility has confirmed that Neometals’ adsorbent technology is able to successfully recover lithium and potassium from salar brines while rejecting all of the sodium in solution.
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The continuous cycle testing demonstrates that the technology has the potential to replace the sodium removal by the conventional solar evaporation process stage used in typical brine processing flowsheets, such as those used in the Andes region of South America.
The conventional solar evaporation phase requires significant capital expenditure to
construct a series of large evaporation ponds, significant maintenance of the operating
ponds to harvest and store salt and has an approximate 12 months processing period.
Water in the brine that has been extracted from aquifers and salars is lost to the
atmosphere through evaporation.
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In comparison, the Proof of Concept test results indicate that lithium and potassium
adsorption, and rejection of sodium, could be conducted using conventional process
equipment with residence times of less than 30 minutes. Returning nearly all of the brine
volume to the salar allows exploitation of salar aquifers with anticipated minimal impact
on the water table.
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Test Results
Synthetic and natural brine samples were used in bench scale laboratory testing at a
leading independent Australian research facility. Research and development work since
2015 has resulted in:
‐ the complete rejection (100%) of sodium in the brine by the adsorbent material
‐ in the adsorption phase lithium recovery ranging from 53‐79% and potassium recovery
from 36‐45%. The balance is returned to the salar for future extraction.
‐ Equilibrium adsorption (loading) was typically 5‐15 minutes and desorption (stripping)
was 5‐10 minutes in the cycle testing phase. Adsorbent readily separated from the
aqueous phase using conventional solid/liquid separation methods.
Trial adsorbent has been made from commercial reagents and from titanium compounds
produced from the Company’s Barrambie Titanium Project test program. Performance of
adsorbent material appears to improve with increased grade of raw material and the
Barrambie test product appears to deliver superior adsorbent performance.
The conceptual plan is to return “stripped” brine to the salar or aquifer and use a large
processing volume coupled with short cycle time to extract lithium/potassium on a
suitable scale. The Company is also evaluating other technologies that can be coupled
with the adsorption technology in an integrated flow sheet that completely replaces the
salt removal and brine concentration/purification phases used in conventional brine flow
sheets.
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Neometals Managing Director, Chris Reed, commented: “Proving this scalability of this
technology will have significant implications for brine‐based producers and developers,
who hold seventy‐five percent of the world’s lithium resources. Increasing the speed and
yield of lithium extraction from brines and reducing operating and capital costs are the
keys to unlocking supply needed to meet the lithium demands of the next decade. ”
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Next Steps
The Company has filed a Provisional Patent and PCT Application. Its strategy is to develop related technologies and commercialise the technologies with suitable partners. The commercial strategy is licence the technology for royalties and to retain the right to
deploy it as principal.
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The Company will keep the market updated on all material developments with commercialisation partners.
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ENDS
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For further information, please contact:
Chris Reed
Managing Director
Neometals Ltd
+61 8 9322 1182
info@neometals.com.au