A few others have already responded with accurate comments so i...

A few others have already responded with accurate comments so i wont repeat too much.

For those unaware ITM had/have already performed leaching with NaCl and proven a portion of this REO is infact ionic. The issue they initially faced was that these recovering with salt only were a little low.

So this test work that they were doing in the background was just to see if they could find a method which gave cost effective extraction. The type of leach results presented is what a lot of the pretend ionic clays have been releasing. Basically trying to paint an optic that they are ionic (when they haven't been proven) and that the recoveries are awesome (even though those some of the leach test were done as pretty aggressive.)

These results are effectively showing what could leach out under more aggressive leach. (strong acid). It shows what % of the REO are in colloidal phase. What they are suggesting now - is due to knowing what pure NaCl does for recoveries and how much is ionic and now the opposite end which is the HCL leach. They're going to see if they can find the sweet spot. i.e. they will decrease HCL and add NaCl to see if they can find a point somewhere in the middle where the acid dose and or acid consumption rate isn't that high.

Basically once the team saw that the initial NaCl results didn't come back super high they knew it was going to be a bit more complex/difficult hence the pivot to graphite focus.

Anyways there are 20-30 companies which worse REO projects and no ionic portion proven. They are still worth 20-30m+ so this isn't the worst thing to have in the background - but the graphite is the main game. Anything from here is a bonus IMHO.

SF2TH