Hi Miro, Welsho54,
Thanks for coming back to me.
@Miro
I get what your saying, but look into it yourself and see what numbers you come out with.
For a helping hand, go to the LPD PFS press release, page 7.
http://www.lepidico.com/wp-content/...Phase-1-L-Max-Plant-Pre-Feasibility-Study.pdf
Table 4 - key point is that operating costs are USD/t of concentrate processed. Therefore the quantity in tonnes of concentrate to make 1 tonne of Li2CO3 is essential to the calculation.
You can bodge the concentrate calculation by using the info from the LPD PFS. 29ktpa throughput / 3ktpa output = 9.66 tonnes of concentrate to make a tonne of Li2CO3. Or you can do it as done in the original example
4.5% concentrate
94% recovery rate
2.47 conversion rate Li2O to Li2CO3
So 4.5% x 94% = 4.23%
1 tonne of Li2CO3 = 100%
therefore 1 tonne of Li2CO3 = 100%/2.47 Li2O conversion = 40.5
40.5/4.23 = 9.57
To make 1 tonne of Li2CO3 = 9.57 tonnes of concentrate.
(Apologies to all you mathematical purists out there, not very elegant, but I think it gets the job done!)
What figures do you get from that for the costs?
Now try applying to EMH values edited in both the concentrate percentage and the cost.
Next, Table 3 - Calculated down, for every one tonne of Li2CO3 produced, you get 13.33 to 16.66 tonnes of sodium silicate produced.
Page 5 tells you the ratio is 1.6. Page 7 tells you its 40%wt at a ratio of 2.0.
Page 6 tells you its PQ Corp for the pricing.
http://www.pqcorp.com/Portals/1/lit/04_SS_11_1_16.pdf
I've used product "D" for the calculations. Pricing is in lbs so you'll need to convert to t.
What figures do you get for the sodium silicate credit?
Now try applying that to the EMH numbers.
I'm totally happy to be proved wrong, it happens a lot! I may have used wrong numbers, wrong equation, or fat fingers. Please point me in the direction of any errors so I can recalculate.
@Welsho54
Depending on the validity of these calculations, my opinion is this. If these sodium silicate credits are so high, the whole operation hypothetically using L-Max is dependent on these credits, otherwise EMH would be a non profit organisation. There is the following statement in the LPD PFS on page 6.
"The price for the sodium silicate has been sourced from the PQ Corporation website for a comparable quality product to that produced by L-Max®
but discounted by up to 15% in the first three years of operation to allow product quality to be fully established."
So the way I read that is that if this was applicable to EMH, EMH would be walking into a process that is totally reliant on these credits for its profit, without being 100% confident of the quality or saleability of the "by product". If that is the case, how could our BoD responsibly propose L-Max as the preferred processing choice at this stage of both companies development? Potentially for the future when more is proved up, yes, but too many risks there I think for the now.
Is that therefore the reason why the BoD stated that there is too much reliance on by product credits, or too much technical risk? There must be a valid reason for the choices made to ultimately benefit the company and shareholders.
I may be totally barking up the wrong tree here. I appreciate anyone elses points of view, analysis and critisism so I can further my understanding. All is IMHO.
Cheers.
(20min delay)