One of the posts above - by Shellies - is a typical reply you...

One of the posts above - by Shellies - is a typical reply you get when people just read headlines and don't delve into geology and what it actually takes to make battery grade material. Newspapers are just reporting headlines.

Here is a table on something already reported on the McDermitt Calera lithium - Extracting Lithium (911metallurgist.com)


The known here is that it is a clay deposit, possible some form of lacustrine sediment formation that needs further work to establish. The Li20 grade is ok - at about 0.36% - 0.64% Li (or about 0.78% Li20 - 1.37Li20), which is actually very good for a clay deposit, but iit s not a brine also, and the key is whether it can be treated viably to produce positive NPV/IRR. Noting the table is two samples only and not indication of overall grade throughout the deposit.

The key around viability for clays is around the following:
1. Deleterious amounts in the clays and ease of extraction/separation.
2. Recovery rates.
3. Costs of extraction and amount of reagents to be used.
4. Grain size a key and variability of grain sizes in the resource which impacts recovery and capex costs in particular.

The above are specimens, and I note the UGPS states grade is more around the 0.3 Li mark for the depsoit itself, still very good for a clay deposit - Lithium in the McDermitt caldera, Nevada and Oregon (usgs.gov)

Ultimately clay is a new area of development and I'll just leave this paper up for others to form own views - the key to 2 and 3 above is actually 1 and 4, as clay deposits by the very nature they are formed vary between deposits and within the same deposit - a good article IMO on McDermitt itself and some past tests:
Extracting Lithium (911metallurgist.com)

Now deleterious elements - well Mg, F and Fe are key deleterious elements here and they are very high. A case in point, Bolivia has the largest brine deposit but it is utterly useless given the Mg content in it - refer point 4 Post #: 69711272.

Whilst conceptual, attrition scrubbing could be a solution but the effectiveness of attrition scrubbing is also based on the shape of the grain size itself, as per below, so it is not as easy as one may think it is and application of this technology for clays still needs a lot of work. And grain sizes in clays differ which equates to cost. Or in other words recovery rates, given particle variability, are likely to be low without a significant improvement in technology.
Attrition Scrubbers (911metallurgist.com)

Implication is the sediment and makeup of clay grains, and they are not homogenous, which is pretty obvious given how the deposits form, so it will be interesting how resource variability issues and how that feeds into costs alone come through should anyone ever get access to those lands, let alone accessing it given its location and dealing with the 'spiritual' issues of such access, and how that impacts costs, especially removing deleterious elements, recovery and viability. This clay deposit is also a smevitie-illite clay, and that means variability in deleterious elements as well as grain sizes.

All IMO and probably looking at 10 years plus before this clay deposit comes on stream, if it comes on stream at all. A lot has to happen in the interim.

All IMO