2021 and beyond, page-2225

Steve has sent me a detailed answer related to the water topic, hope this clarifies a lot:

Summary:

• There are no material issues with water at the Kachi project using the Lilac DLE process. Actually, the real benefit of the process is its very low water usage.

In Lake's Kachi Project Pre Feasibility Study:

• 23 million cubic metres of lithium bearing brine is processed each year (23 billion litres). This brine is not drinkable as it carries about 6 times more salts than seawater. Virtually all of this brine is returned to its source, but without the lithium, which is less than 1% of the total volume. (If Lake was using evaporation ponds, virtually all of that water would be evaporated into the atmosphere)
• The DLE process produces lithium chloride in a single step. Any remaining impurities are removed.
• Considerable water is removed from the lithium chloride "eluate" using reverse osmosis, which is later used as process water. Process water is used in the production of lithium carbonate from lithium chloride in all lithium brine to lithium carbonate plants. Some of this is raw water and some is recycled water.

Further information:

• LKE is refining the process at present and will be releasing this in a few weeks as part of a detailed ESG assessment of the project
• As a guide, the DLE process at Kachi uses about 18-20% of the process water that is used at Livent's lithium brine operation 80km north of Kachi. (If BMW can sign an offtake agreement with Livent, its a better proposition with Lake regarding the water usage, beside other advantages that Lake has)
• Further, raw water is available as the Kachi project is the lowest part of a basin that drains an area of 9500 km2 (nearly 1 million hectare) closed drainage.