Going in a different direction, Mineral Resources Limited have ditched plans to become a lithium hydroxide producer in favour of becoming a lithium sulfate producer.
The basic reason given by the CEO, was that LiOH production is very difficult to do, while LiSO was relatively simple.
From what I can tell, the production of lithium sulfate occurs during the process of producing lithium carbonate anyway.
It is the later stages of the process where it becomes more complex.
From what I can gather, MIN’s rationale for going only as far as lithium sulfate, is because they can produce a highly valued mid-stream product (at the mine site) without needing to build and operate a high cost and technically difficult LiOH refinery.
In other words, they can make bigger profits from selling bread and butter than they can from selling pavlova.
“The goal of the acid roasting step is to allow the lithium to be extracted from the mixture as water-soluble lithium sulfate, which is amenable to leaching. Through leaching, the lithium sulfate can then be converted into market-ready compounds lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide.”
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