Good old fireside chat, page-4647

The other day a poster tried to show and discuss the contents of the bench-top tests from last year, but most of the findings were dismissed by people here.
I have reproduced the table below, from the announcement on 6/7/17 p9.

The final concentration of selected brine minerals after the extraction of Mg and Ca is shown in Table 3.

Feed brine Stage Li g/l Mg g/l Ca g/l
Brine 1 Feed (target values) 1.7 34 3
After Mg removal 1.3 <0.002 1.74
After Ca removal 1.2 <0.002 <0.009

Brine 2 Feed (target values) 0.5 33.5 49.9
After Mg removal 0.38 0.01 34.8
After Ca removal 0.23 <.002 0.021

Brine feed 1 was the 1700ppm, which current results look like being non existent or at best low quantities.

Brine feed 2 was the 500ppm synthetic brine. The poster the other day was correct.
In Brine test 1 the quantity of lithium left goes from 1.7g/l down to 1.2g/l, a 29% loss of lithium.
In Brine test 2 the quantity of lithium goes from .5g/l down to .23g/l, a 54% loss of lithium.
There is still .021g/l of Ca left in the solution.

These 2 tests would suggest that a lower starting lithium content, say 143ppm would have a greater percentage loss of lithium than the synthetic 500ppm brine.

To give an indication of how much water (brine) would have to be processed to gain decent quantities of lithium carbonate, I've multiplied out some numbers.
Assuming the 143ppm lithium can have ONLY the same loss as the 500ppm synthetic brine, means 54% loss or retention of 0.06578g/l.
To convert 1gm of lithium to 1gm of lithium carbonate multiply by 5.323. The 0.06578g/l of lithium becomes 0.3501g/l of lithium carbonate.

To make 1kg of lithium carbonate would take 2855 litres of the original brine, and be worth about ~$US15.00

1 tonne of lithium carbonate would take the treatment of 2,855,000 litres of brine, and be worth ~$US15,000

Even with these rough calculations, I have left out the minor detail that there is still too much Calcium in the product. The lithium carbonate would only be about 93% with calcium making up most of the rest, ie not pure enough.
The process would involve pumping these quantities of brine, then processing to remove Mg, then more movement to another tank to remove Ca, then final process to make Li2Co3, filter and separate from water.

I do not see how these processes can take place with 2855 litres of brine and have a low cost to produce 1kg of lithium carbonate.

Working out these numbers from the companies own document, makes me understand why the brine producers in SA use evaporation to take the quantity of lithium to 6000ppm, before processing.

IMO these numbers explain why the ASN share price is in freefall, I suspect others have come to the same conclusion, that even if the process could produce BG lithium, the cost is going to be prohibitive, both capex and opex.

I would suggest that holders of shares here work these numbers out for themselves carefully, then double check them, and work out the number of potential processes that these quantities of brine need to go through.

If I'd done these calculations last year, I probably would have never bought in the first place, and missed my good trade in ASN.