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Standard Lithium Announces Delivery of Its SiFT Lithium Carbonate Plant to El Dorado Arkansas Project Site
July 15, 2021 8:00am EDT
announced the delivery of its ‘SiFT’ lithium carbonate plant to the El Dorado Arkansas project site, located at the LANXESS South Plant facility. The SiFT Plant will be installed adjacent to and connected to the Company’s LiSTR Direct Lithium Extraction (“DLE”) pre-commercial scale demo plant. The SiFT plant is designed to take the intermediate product made by the company’s DLE process (a high purity, concentrated lithium chloride solution) and convert that into a battery-quality (or better) lithium carbonate.The crystallization plant was constructed by Saltworks Technologies Inc (see the Company’s June 6, 2020 news release).

Standard Lithium Provides Project Update
January 20, 2022 7:00am EST
The ‘SiFT’ lithium carbonate plant was installed at the site in Q3 2021 (see September 1st news release) and has been successfully commissioned and used to produce battery quality lithium carbonate at the plant. The lithium carbonate was produced at the SiFT Plant in a single crystallization stage (contrasting with multiple stages in a typical process). The crystals were washed twice using hot deionized water to attain battery-quality (>99.83% purity) lithium carbonate. This is the first of its kind demonstration of a continuous Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) plant being operated at scale, producing a concentrated lithium chloride intermediate product and directly converting to battery quality lithium carbonate in a single crystallization step. Completion of this phase of work is another important milestone for the Company and its technology-driven approach to development.

Time from plant delivery to commissioning for a modular Li2CO3 plant - note this was their first try at this - the second & subsequent will have the benefit of lessons learnt from this. That number will come down with experience.