Ann: Argosy confirms first batch of LCE produced, page-444

I tend to agree that Pablo would base his process on the concept of recovering lithium carbonate from concentrated lithium brine via an ion exchange method, especially in view of his (or to be correct FMC’s) patent US 8,309,043. I always thought that this would be a good way to deal with the high Mg:Li ratio. However, as it has already been pointed out, ion exchange is well known and therefore there might be the possibility of infringement.

Yes, a minor change to an existing process can make your new process novel, but not necessarily inventive. Does the minor change or improvement simply constitute a mere process optimisation, something which would have been obvious for a skilled person? Potentially you might need a little bit more than a minor change to an existing process.

But having said that, and looking at Pablo’s patent again, it was granted over a similar process disclosed in US 5,599,516, with the only difference being that the lithium brine wasn’t concentrated prior to processing it. You would assume that using concentrated brine is obvious, however, it was argued that using a concentrated brine over un-concentrated well brine had a surprising effect and increased the efficiency of the ion exchange. So, it all depends what effect a minor change has, and whether it is predictable and/or surprising and thus not obvious to a skilled person.

Where is the inventive part in AGY’s/Pablo’s new process? Who knows, perhaps heating to a certain temperature in the final process step with gas (LOL) has this surprising effect.

Anyway, I think I got a bit side tracked here and better get back to work now…

By the way, I enjoyed reading your post regarding the process, good post. Thanks for that.