Ann: Macquarie conference presentation, page-20

My concern is that the crystallisers are to be closely integrated with the lithium carbonate plant. I recall that
"Settling ponds and flocculants were introduced to reduce crystal loading of the concentrated brine pond prior to feed into the lithium carbonate plant and allow a clarified brine to be fed to the heat exchanger plates reducing the incidence of crystal formation."
My concern is that they may revisit this problem, or something similar.

My preference would be to keep it very simple - increase the pond area for a bit more evaporating "horsepower" and provide more storage at the end of the pond process. When they set out to build the ponds they did so with a safety margin for wet weather
"The evaporation information is coherent in that the pilot scale pond testing on saturated
brine provides an annual rate of 1,733 mm which is the value used in the SKM design
criteria. This is conservative in the context of the Pan A test result of 3900mm per year
on water and 2,600 mm per year on unsaturated brine. The actual ponds area has been
designed on the basis of 1,300 mm of annual evaporation. This is a reasonable base line
in the context of brine activity factors that range from 75 – 80% depending on saturation
levels, and industrial factors of 75% applied to small pond data to predict large pond
evaporation rates. This also allows a generous margin to compensate for any unusually
high rainfall event."
I would like to see them increase that safety margin and couple it with additional concentrated brine storage. The excess evaporating capacity would allow a much faster & larger inventory build during normal conditions and especially so during very good evaporating periods. The greater inventory of concentrated brine would be there to carry them through the February events. My quick reckoning based on the earlier figure of 140 million for wells and ponds for phase 2 25000 tpa suggests that the 13 mill USD crystalliser investment could give them maybe 12% more pond area. Together with more storage, I think that could be significant.

Another way to look at that is that the primary circuit has been shown to be capable of up to 66 t/d (well in excess of nameplate). Additional pond area providing additional concentrated brine feed seems like an investment that is worthwhile in its own right and not just as a wet weather measure.