- Alpha Lithium (TSXV:ALLI) has announced it has enlisted Lilac Solutions for a brine extraction study
- The direct lithium extraction work will be on brine samples from the company’s Tolillar Salar project in Argentina
- Lilac Solutions will begin stage 1 of engineering, which requires brine samples from the first stage being sent to Lilac’s office in California
- Based on results from the first stage, Alpha Lithium will then decide whether or not the company wants to continue with stage 2
- After recently establishing a treasury of C$35 million, the company has been focused on bringing Tolillar Salar to production
- Shares of Alpha Lithium rose 1.35 per cent to $0.75 as of 11:25 a.m. EDT
Alpha Lithium (ALLI) has appointed Lilac Solutions to complete the first stage of a direct lithium extraction study.
The study will be conducted on the company’s Tolillar Salar project in Argentina.
The brine will go through Lilac’s proprietary lithium extraction modules for at least three weeks, after which time the results will be monitored and reported to Alpha Lithium.
The results will provide the company with several key findings, including :
- Lithium recovery rate, which is the percentage of lithium that is able to be recovered from the brine
- Lithium purity assessment
- Determination of lithium chloride chemical analysis
- Indications of reagent volumes used
- Range of operating expenses for future commercial production facility
“Since recently establishing a treasury of more than $35 million, our primary focus on the Tolillar Salar has been on achieving production,” Brad Nichol, president and CEO of Alpha Lithium, said in a statement.
“Internally, our Beyond Lithium team has been working for months on developing its knowledge base of our brine through in-depth chemical analyses and benchtop studies. Now is the perfect time to combine our brine knowledge with the technology developed by Lilac, who has extensively studied dozens of brines from the Lithium Triangle.”
Should the company move to proceed with the second stage of the engineering process, it would accomplish several different tasks, such as:
- Roughly three months of lithium production at lab scale
- Establishing a process design criteria and completing lithium extraction test work for a feasibility study
- Develop a tailored process flow diagram for a pilot plant at Tolillar Salar
The Tolillar Salar project is 100 per cent owned by Alpha Lithium and is one of the last remaining undeveloped salars in Salta Province, Argentina.
The project is currently made of up of 10 exploration concessions, totalling 27,000 hectares in the Salar de Tolillar basin in the Salta province. It is also located in the Lithium trinagle of Argentina, Bolivia ad Chile and in the Puna geological region of northwest Argentina.
Shares of Alpha Lithium rose 1.35 per cent to C$0.75 as of 11:25 a.m. EDT.