The Great Soltaea is not an obvious place for the development of a lithic mine. Salton Sea boasts of lithium concentrations. A little less than 200 parts per million. Argentina, where Lilac has another test object, has more than 700 parts per million.
Here, on the Great Salt -Link -Literal? “These are 70 parts per million,” Raf Sally, General Director of Lilac, born in Australia, tells me. “Therefore, if you had a football stadium with 45,000 seats, it would be three people.”
For lilac, this is actually a feature of location. “This is a very, very good demonstration of the ability of our technology,” says Sally. According to him, LILAC equipment can extract lithium at high levels of brine with low concentration, proves its versatility. This was not the reason why Lilac chose the site. “Utah is a state for mining industry,” says Elizabeth Pond, vice -president of communications. And although the water of the lake has low lithium concentrations, the extraction of brine simply requires a hose into the water, while other places will require digging wells at high costs.
When, during my round, I accompanied Sally for the test, our route through the ground districts laid out with the fields of wild sunflower. The company itself is more than the assortment of transformed shipping containers and two mobile trailers, one in order to serve as the main office, and the other as a field laboratory for samples. This is a mesh, relying on diesel generators, which, according to the company, will be replaced by propane units after this place is converted into a permanent tool, but ultimately can be changed to geothermal technologies entered the Hot Rock resource located nearby. (Solar panels explaining Sally could not put 24-7 power source that needs an object.) But this depends on his connection with the Great Sallen Lake through this long hose.
Alexander Kaufman
Having pumped up the mountain, the water of the lake passes through a series of filters to remove solids until it is in a vessel filled with specially designed ceramic beads of the company made of patented material, which attracts ion lithium from water. After saturation, balls are carried out through acid washing to remove lithium. Then the remaining brine is repeatedly checked and, as soon as it is considered safe for discharge back to the lake, is pumped back to the shore through the outgoing tube in the hose. Meanwhile, the lithium solution is clogged in the tanks on the spot before sending for processing, which will be turned into a carbonate of a battery lithium, which is a white powder.
“As a technology supplier in the long run, if we have decades of demand for lithium, they want to position their technologies as something that can use a bunch of markets,” says McBride. “To have a technology that can potentially restore various types of resources in various types of environment is a tempting proposal.”
This territory will not remain so long. During my visit, the Lilac team began to collect a place after the completion of demonstration tests. The results that the company shared exclusively with me imply enormous success, especially for such a low brine with numerous impurities: the LILAC equipment on average restored 87% of the accessible lithium with a purity of 99.97%.
