Hi All,
Chemical Engineer here. I think there is a large amount of misunderstanding on this forum about the announcement today. The announcement treats the IG vs BG issue as trivial and as if it isn't really a big issue. This is probably because that is the case. The soluble deleterious elements are removed by ION exchange. That is a selective resin with an infinity of the opposite charged ion is used. e.g amberjet 1200H resin (collects negative ions as it is a strong acid cation e.g SO4-) and amberjet 4200CL resin (collects positive charged ions as it is a strong base anion e.g Mg2+, Fe2+, K+, Ca2+ ect).
So when I read this announcement what I see is Jerko saying the Mg / SO4 are on spec meaning the selective resins are on the money and clearly whatever fractional crystalisation they are using upstream is handling the majority of the Mg.
When I read the part about the contamination from the soluble deleterious elements that are normally removed in the "wash" stage I read; the soluble ions aren't being adequately "dissolved" in the aqueous phase as we can't get the temperature high enough for this to happen at a reasonable rate. As such the ions can't be removed in the ion exchange section since they aren't disassociated into ion form. Once we get the temperature up into the standard operating range we can tick this box. The science behind this is concrete and well known hence it wasn't put forward as a big issue simply a minor setback.
This is a flaw that technical people can have when trying to communicate to a diverse audience, it is hard to describe some things in laymen terms, if technical jargon is used excessively then that can confuse people and the default answer is to back out of something if it is not understood.
I hope this helps people understand the science a bit better.
For anyone who want's to dive deeper I have attached a link to a patent which was filed by our Argentina friends Orocobre Limited in 2015. While I'm sure there are some differences in the actual AGY method I suspect there would be significant similarities given we are both trying to make BG LCE from Argentina Brine.
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2013036983A1/en
For the record I agree not having gas is a average "excuse" however, they had to release something as they promised end of May. Personally I expect the BG confirmation to minor and the JORC / OT as the real driver. Chemistry is easy! People not so much!
Cheers
