It's worth reading the 2013 Sylvnia evaporation report and the subsequent Perth lab results. From the 2013 field trial RWD speculates that it can remove the need for costly flotation by back mixing high concentration MgCl2 brine.
Fast forward to the LD pilot pond trials in 2019 and RWD again demonstrate the presence of leonite in early ponds which is then eliminated by back mixing.
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/ann-quarterly-activities-report.4886089/The main point of difference between RWD and AMN is RWD set out to eliminate flotation back in 2013. Whether this is because they couldn't make flotation work and didn't appreciate that cooling, as per AMN, was a crucial step is unknown. What is know is RWD stated that flotation was costly and this appears to be the major driving force to simplify their flowsheet.
AMN is giving us a solution which makes an expensive processing option even more expensive. RWD looked for a simpler, lower cost solution 10 years ago and demonstrated the process, on site in real world conditions, in 2019.
But this is history as RWD has now moved onto the syngenite reaction. Did RWD do this because their non-flotation process was flawed in some way? They haven't said this.
My personal feeling is RWD has always been ahead of their local rivals when it comes to understanding the evaporation and processing and they still are.
If AMN's solution is as simple as pre-cooling the conversion process prior to flotation of schoenite, why did they pull out of Beyondie? Surely their solution would have been relatively low cost and easy to implement? It will be interesting to see how their flotation work plays out. What is clear is their publication of this work suggests they got way ahead of themselves when they published a DFS. Definitely not bankable when the basic physicochemical process is yet to be worked out.
