I think you are grossly exaggerating the revised approach.
“Total black box”
“Completely changing the flowsheet”
“undoing years of marketing spin on Galan being a traditional evap. pond play”
It looks to me like they are simply modifying one part of the process required to produce the LiCl product.
This appears to be offering several distinct advantages:
Lower capex
Lower opex
Shorter path to production
Shared risk
…but yes, as many here have said, we need more detail on what the specific plan entails, what has been tested, what the key contract details are etc etc.
There remains a larger and longer-term plan here to eventually produce carbonate, and this intermediate chloride product strategy was iirc a means to reduce capital and tech risk, and maintain some momentum in a market where large sums of capital have proven difficult to obtain on favourable terms.
We need more info.
They seem to have an opportunity to modify one process step to a nanofiltration technique. This is hardly moving away from being an evap pond play.
Instead of crucifying them for what you guess is a shitty decision, why not wait to understand why they clearly think this is the best decision available to them at this time…?
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