Ore sorters, concentrators and iron grade discussion, page-8

Global lithium has been exploring ore sorters with 3 announcements on 30 May 2023, 21 September 2023 and 4 July 2024.

The most recent update of 4 July was labelled as excellent but had extremely disappointing attributes. Exploring their medium grade example, they started with 1.13% grade material and due to assuming Mafic from either side of the pegmatite seam it has a massive 5% Fe₂O₃ grade. For the ore sorter to be a success this needs to fall to a sufficiently low level that it doesn't concentrate back above 1% after DMS, Flotation, WHIMS and LIMS.

The ore sorter did a good job:

• From a lithium perspective the 1.13% turned into a pile of 1.77% material and 0.40% material
• From an iron ore perspective the 5.0% Fe₂O₃ turned into a pile of 0.5% material and 11.0% material
• The job was however inferior to the best cases from Whabouchi with a separation efficiency in the mid 90% (noting reporting isn't quite the same test)

>The success rate in Li₂O was 85.2% [56.9% / (9.9% + 56.9%)]
>The success rate in iron rejection was very strong 93.9% [60.3% / (60.3 + 3.9%)]

The crushing to enable this ore sorting did a simply horrible job. 36% by mass (33.2% by lithium and 35.9% by Fe₂O₃) was crushed below the size that the ore sorter could use. This smaller crushed material had similar attributes to the overall head grade. If recombined with the ore sorter results the lithium grade crashes from 1.77% to 1.40%. The iron oxide grade skyrockets from 0.5% to 2.8%. GL1 is back to massive iron issues on a higher lithium grade product. Their test work is showing the problem of crushing fines in much the same way Core Lithium's Grants operation found the problem of crushing fines after commissioning although these are two different definitions of fines.

Someone being cynical might also suggest some of the problematic material for the ore sorter may have been crushed to a smaller size so it was screened out. I hope it was an honest test but 36% crushing too small is huge. It also flags a potential major crushing fines issue for GL1 Manna ore re DMS.

GL1 would be faced with an ugly choice:

• Process the genuinely high grade material of 1.77% Li₂O (and 0.5% Fe₂O₃) at perhaps 80% recovery rates (it is high grade material). The 56.9% recovery rate to that stage would drop down to 45.6%. A project with 45.6% recovery rates is going to struggle to be viable if it has anything but super-low strip ratios and GL1 doesn't have that strength
• Try to process the "crushed Fines" product that is <8mm separately noting its only 1.04% Li₂O and 5.0% Fe₂O₃
• Create a blended lithium product that is high grade (1.4%) but high iron (2.8%) and hope that WHIMS and LIMS can get the iron grade down without killing the recovery rates.

GL1 appears to be taking this last blended option but haven't completed the reporting loop. Yep they have lost 9.9% of the lithium to get good grade (1.4%) product but with 2.8% iron oxide product that can easily be mined from thin seams. They haven't shown how they plan to get the 2.8% iron grade down under 1% and what further impact that will have on recovery rates. Unsurprisingly TG6's share price took a hit because GL1 provided further ore sorting test work that didn't produce a useable product. They have produced product with similarities to Wodgina tailings!!