pt read here volcanoe

chile volcanic ash Asked by rileyi on 08-05-2008
Dear Phil,
Reports on the recent volcanic eruptions have reports of ash spreading into Argentinia and causing problems.How far away is this activity from the Li project,and could this ash have any chance of reaching it.
In a previous response on the subject of earthquakes, you advised that we could take a pretty big tremor.What precautions have we got in the case of an eruption causing ash to spoil the brine evapourative ponds.
Thanking you in advance,
Riles.
Response From Phillip
We have two volcanoes about 15km from the ponds and they last erupted about 1.2m years ago.

The Chile volcano is about 1,300Km from the Rincon so the dust will be very fine when it arrives. Try using Google and you can work this out for yourself.

What makes you think ash spoils the brine? - it actually assists crystallisation of the NaCL by providing a nucleus - the salar is covered with about 1.5m of salt, so no ash will get in there.

Our main issue is magnesium contamination so we are building small ponds 1 hectare rather than 25 hectares which our competitors have, to reduce the impact if two or three ponds get contaminated we haven't lost the whole of the production capacity.

regards