As demand grows for batteries to power eco-friendly vehicles, an Australian-based lithium company is looking at setting up shop in Sudbury.
Lepidico, with a head office in Perth, is planning to launch a plant in the Nickel City that will extract lithium concentrate from hard-rock deposits, using a unique process it touts as more efficient than existing methods.
The company says its system can “achieve high lithium recovery,” while also offsetting production costs and eliminating tailings or effluent by refining a variety of useful byproducts.
“We’re doing the full feasibility study now and if it proves viable, it means we would have a chemical plant that effectively has no waste coming out of it,” said Joe Walsh, managing director of Lepidico.
The company has already secured an Australia patent for its L-Max technology, with other patent applications pending in Europe, the U.S. and Japan.
“There are other processes out there but they tend to employ roasting technology, which is power-intensive and not the greenest,” said Walsh.
The Lepidico method requires less energy and land for the production of lithium, he said, and can also yield fertilizers and soil-enhancers for agricultural use and land reclamation.
Sudbury may not have a handy reserve of lithium itself, but it does have an abundant supply of the compound required to process it.
“That’s the big reason we chose Sudbury,” said Walsh. “Sulfuric acid is the main chemical we use in the plant and you have two large producers there, in Glencore and Vale, who collectively produce a million tonnes per year.”
While Lepidico hasn’t inked a supply contract yet with either mining company, Walsh expects a deal can be worked out for a supply of the chemical reagent, which would not have to travel far and consequently alleviate some of the safety concerns of sending sulfuric acid a long distance by rail.
Sudbury was appealing, too, for “the depth of markets locally for our byproducts,” said Walsh.
The company plans to create potassium fertilizer and other spinoffs that could be used “as remediation material for landfill sites or to reclaim old mine pits and roasting beds,” said Walsh. “There’s a legacy of acid issues in Sudbury and our residue is alkaline, so it offers neutralizing and buffering capabilities. You can mix the residue with biomass to provide land reclamation.”
The company is looking at an industrial park in Sudbury for its plant, which will start off as a demonstration-scale facility measuring 200 by 180 metres (or 36,000 square metres).
“The Ministry of Northern Development and Mines has been extremely helpful and introduced us to five or six prospective sites,” said Walsh. “We have two sites we’re looking at now and at one of those we are undertaking environmental baseline work, but at this point haven’t made a commitment.”
Walsh said the Phase One facility will have a “small footprint” and little in the way of emissions, other than steam. “It really is as green and clean as you can get with a chemical plant.”
Meanwhile as many as 70 people will be employed at the site, and that’s just during its demonstration phase.
“We are looking at producing 2,500 to 3,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate per year, but we could upscale to 5,000 tonnes, and a full-scale plant would be five times that,” said Walsh.
The company was initially exploring a partnership with Laurentian University for its assessment phase but is now working the University of Waterloo.
“We’re on track to complete the feasibility study in the first quarter of next year, and hope to be into production by the second quarter of 2020,” said Walsh.
A mining engineer by training, Walsh moved with his family from Australia to Toronto last year, as did his chief financial officer.
He said he plans to remain here and has great confidence in the lithium project taking off.
In the short term, the mineral concentrate required for the Sudbury plant would have to be imported from a mining operation in Portugal, he said, but there are also potential sources in Canada, including a deposit in northwestern Ontario.
“In the process of time, I like to contemplate processing lithium from Canada,” said Walsh.
The Lepidico director said demand for lithium should only balloon in coming years.
“The main growth area is batteries, particularly with the advent of electrical vehicles,” he said. “If you believe some of the professional commentators, the demand will increase fivefold over the next eight years.”
He also thinks there will be a domestic market for the SOP (sulfate of potash) fertilizer his plant can produce, along with other byproducts.
“There’s also the potential to produce gypsum,” he said. “There’s very little use of that in Northern Ontario because the nearest source is Ottawa. We would be the only producer in the region so there would be the opportunity to support local markets.”
Walsh is confident his project will find all the support it needs in Sudbury, as it “offers great capabilities in mining and chemistry services,” as well as “a local university with a lot of capabilities. We see great potential to work collaboratively with them in the future.”
Graeme Spiers, an Earth Sciences prof at Laurentian with expertise in environmental chemistry, said he is intrigued by the development and believes it is a good fit for the city.
“One of the things we need in Sudbury is more medium- to high-tech feed industries,” he said. “Demand is going to be huge for lithium in the short term and there are not a lot of places globally that produce it, so I think it’s a great opportunity locally to develop something.”
Spiers said he can’t foresee any major environmental issue with the plant, particularly since it plans to make use of its residue.
“It’s not a high-temperature plant like a smelter,” he said. “It’s a high-end chemistry plant, and the use for the material is strictly in the high-tech industry, which is pretty tightly regulated.”
The scale of the project is far smaller than the ferrochrome smelter that was proposed for Coniston, he noted, and the waste generated would also be far less.
“There will be a plant and a footprint, but my understanding is it’s a zero-effluent facility, and that has to be hugely attractive,” he said.
Spiers had some initial conversations with Lepidico about research opportunities and said he looks forward to reviewing the work done by Waterloo colleagues.
“We discussed looking at the utility of some of their byproducts for land reclamation work,” he said. “I know when I looked at it, I thought this is quite promising. I can definitely see a liming and nutrient-supply application, because it’s a carbonate-rich material.”
In the future, Spiers said he’d like to be involved in field trials and greenhouse-growth experiments to see if the “waste” generated in the plant is in fact quite valuable for rehabbing damaged land.
“We can test the potential of their products to stimulate growth and improve soil-nutrient conditions, bringing the pH up more in acidified soils.”
LPD Price at posting:
2.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
Jim Moodie The Sudbury Star
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