Gents!(and ladies if any, and any other genders),
I do urge you to exercise at least a little caution. I don't want to sound like a party pooper or the Grinch but there is still some significant residual risk. I think that's important to point out especially for newcomers to this stock.
The highest risk is the performance of the Hydromet process application to fly ash at commercial scale. We know it works at laboratory scale though I don't recall any performance figures being announced. If at commercial scale the recoveries are below 80% I think it could induce a price crash. If in fact commissioning of the demo plant starts Jan-24 we should have some performance figures by end of 3rd quarter(March). Research(
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef500618r) suggests that leaching of Mg should be above 80% at 70C and claims of full leach within minutes. So, it's a matter of how quickly LMG can optimise conditions to achieve near similar performance at commercial scale.
The next highest risk is LMG Management performance. Disappointed that DP and Peter Church did not have performance bonuses in their remuneration. When we look at past performance of management in the last 5 years, I could only best describe it as fair to poor. Just look back at when this Demo plant was to be operational compared when it will be. I'll breath easier when they announce that commissioning has started. Let's hope stage 2 and 3 don't suffer the same baggage. Peter Church is a relative new comer, time will test his performance. Once that demo plant is up and running, DP needs to step aside and appoint a Chief Operating Officer for the demo plant while he shifts focus to stage 2.
An additional risk is the performance of the hydromet process to Ni slag at commercial scale. Have not seen any lab figures though I presume some tests have been done and there is some info in the literature. It seems that acid leach of slag requires very high strength hydrochloric acid - almost concentrated HCl. A study(
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-52192-3_24) showed that 97% of Mg could be extracted with 8M HCl(Concentrated is 12M) at 80C with ~48 tons of acid/ton of slag, leached over 24hrs. So, it's great that the HCl is recoverable and reusable. I think I did hear through muffled audio at the AGM from DP that after the fly ash work was done at the demo plant they would begin tests with Ni Slag - would be great to have that confirmed. This testing is critical because heating that much acid to 80C is costly and handling 8M HCl requires some rather stringent safety practices. The testing will allow LMG to vary those temperatures and acid concentrations for optimality so hopefully they will be able to bring them down to reduce cost of production.
All that said, I feel confident that the hydromet process will work well with Fly ash. There is still much work to be done to optimise it's application to Ni-Slag to optimise profitability. Once they start collecting performance figures out of the demo plant(especially if we get good figures for Ni Slag) I think we could see the sharks circling for a take-over.
