Hi LJ,
I'm just as keen as you to hear the results of the direct extraction trials, particularly as we've been told that they've proved to be competitive with traditional desalination techniques.
If they're onto a winner then they need to be the first one to exploit the method and I'd still expect them to have that Cone of Silence down to their knees to prevent anybody catching wind of any details.
Unfortunately that includes us at this point.
The potential is, of course, without doubt the absolute Holy Grail of lithium production.
Fast, environmentally friendly production of finished product lithium, without all that mining and blasting.
If its can beat traditional brine on opex and capex then it will be an absolute game changer, potentially disrupting the entire sector, and Galaxy could quickly catapult into the Big 5 and defy all the critics with much nearer term supply of carbonate/hydroxide than the market has been expecting.
That is the potential.
But as far as hard details, I couldn't fill a decent paragraph with what I know about the different possible alternative chemical processes and would have to defer to
@Sjlasx who seems to know what an ion transfer is, and
@GCar who is very briney. Likely even they'd be guessing too, as to exact processes and how well they work with SDV chemistry...
One thing that I do know is that, even if the plant is pointed at a traditional operation, focusing now on lithium chloride production is potentially a cheaper capex bill and could find willing specialist off-takers for the battery tech that is just around the corner - lithium metal batteries.
Its currently a very small to non-existent market right now but as soon as the tech matures and finds its home in an auto maker like Tesla who will appreciate the potential doubling or tripling of battery range, well it could prove to be exactly the right place for Sal de Vida to specialise.
Its a tech where brine will always beat hard rock, and if there is a direct extraction method to get us to lithium chloride even faster = even better.
I'd assume that we will get a decent report to study - what scale of production it can operate on, and what capex is required to get us there.
And, importantly, when we can start cranking out some final product.
Simon Hay has a much stronger chemical industry background than Anthony Tse, so it will be great to have a boss who can explain this potentially complex chemical process stuff to the market and also make the hard decision about which tech to pursue at SDV, based on an area of his own expertise.
