@Scarpa I noticed in your post #: 68004172 on the LTR thread you compared Leo’s Flow sheet with Liontowns
I’ve replied on this forum because it has more to do with Leo than Liontown
I always enjoy your well researched posts and was hopeing you’d comment further on some of your comments I’ve pasted below - followed by my comment.
“LLL are required to use WOF because they cannot liberate the lithium from the ore easily, meaning DMS is not an option”
l fully agree thatWOF (Whole Ore Flotation) was best for us due to poorish results with DMS, though to be fair LTR went to WOF to get better recoveries
Both companies are willing to pay the extra Capex + Opex to achieve better recoveries. I believe the Tailings storeage facility is quite a bit more expensive when using Flotation vs DMS as well.
“LLL are also grinding the ore beyond P80 of 106 microns because according to LLL that is the optimal size to liberation which IMO is going to be interesting as to whether they can achieve their assumed recovery and product specs and how the SAG intergrates with the ball mill”
A few things there, both Leo & Liontown are using 180 microns, Leo found better recoveries with the bigger grind size.
Interestingly Leo will use a Ball Mill, LTR will use a SAG mill to get to that size
Not sure what you mean with the SAG integrating with the Ball Mill - we only have a Ball Mill
“In WOF, LLL is also using Crimms instead of Whims processes, in other words there is a lot of new elements and things LLL are required to do to the WOF process that to be frank are probably going to have elements of risk attached and whether they operate as intended is going to be interesting, including meeting opex costs and recovery rates”
For those reading this & not aware, both Whims & Crimms are methods of magnetic separation, in fact LTR will be using LIMS (Low Intensity Magnetic Separators) before the WHIMS
Our Iron content is 0.56% compared to LTRs 0.8 to < 1.5%. (our Mica is also low less than 1%)
“Essentially LLL is using a different WOF process because the spodumene in its ore is hard to liberate from the ore itself. Whether LLL achieve assumed recovery rates and costs (and no need to retrofit capex) to achieve recovery rates is going to be interesting,”
Both LTR and Leo use a 3 stage Flotation process (roughing + 2 stages cleaning) with the magnetic separation before the flotation.
Note also the Mica flotation circuit was removed from our updated DFS
So I was wondering what is different in our flow sheet that could present the problems you suggest?
(20min delay)