Finally an article, which offers a window into what's to come with the demand for lithium batteries, driving lithium hydroxide production and in turn generating a mountain of lithium waste annually - these major players will be looking for more than just ‘one’ solution.
The way I read it - Westfarmers and Abermarle’s plants, when in full swing, would be producing over 1 million tonnes pa (each) of process tailings and adding Tianqi / IGO plant - I'm guessing, moving forward Australia alone could be looking at over 2.5 milliion pa of waste, needing to be dealt with.
ZEO looks to be well placed to provide one of the many solutions that will be needed to address, what will be a growing ‘global’ environmental problem.
Wesfarmers and rivals charge down the road with lithium
BradThompsonReporter
Updated Jul 2,2021 – 5.21pm,first published at 3.46pm
Australia’s emerging lithium hydroxide producers don’t just want people to drive electric cars, they want them to drive on roads made from the waste left behind during processing.
A big headache for the trio of emerging lithium hydroxide processors in Western Australia is what to do with the huge volumes of tailings left.
Australia’s lithium hydroxide producers are looking at ways to repurpose the huge volumes of waste left behind in making the key battery material.
They are now working together on plans to reuse what could be well over 1 million tonnes-a-year of benign chemical waste material produced in meeting growing global demand for the key battery ingredient.
Wesfarmers chief executive of chemicals, energy and fertilisers Ian Hansen said the producers believed a material known as delithiated beta spodumene could be repurposed instead of dumped.“We are working with our fellow lithium hydroxide producers, and various other organisations, because we believe that this material can be used in roads and building products,” he said.“Rather than have to move it somewhere, we can actually supplement the aggregates industry.”
Wesfarmers, which is investing $1.9 billion in development of its Mt Holland project in partnership with Chile’s Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile, plans to cart the waste from a processing plant at Kwinana, south of Perth, hundreds of kilometres back to the mine.The plant is earmarked for a site almost next door to where China’s Tianqi and new partner IGO Limited are completing their hydroxide plant. EPA gives green light
In announcing the completion of its $US1.4 billion deal with Tianqi for a piece of the Greenbushes lithium mine and Kwinana processing facility on Wednesday, IGO said the long-awaited commissioning of the plant had started and first hydroxide production was expected in the second half of calendar 2021.
Albemarle, which is well on the way to finishing its hydroxide plant about 150 kilometres away at Kemerton, had to scrap plans to dump the tailings at a tip site near the farming town of Dardanup after a backlash from local residents.
Chris Ellison’s Mineral Resources, Albemarle’s junior partner in the Kemerton plant and the mothballed Wodgina lithium mine in the Pilbara, has since proposed carting the waste more than 550 kilometres out to its iron ore operations at Koolyanobbing.Albemarle’s original plan for Kemerton involved producing up to 100,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide a year along with a whopping 1.1 million tonnes of tailings a year.
WA’s Environmental Protection Authority gave it a green light but noted Albemarle was investigating alternative uses for the tailings.
Albemarle walked away from the Dardanup tip plan last year, saying it was evaluating other options for the storage and use of the by-products.
The EPA gave the Wesfarmers-SQM project its blessing in May and appeals closed on June 14. WA Environment Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson is expected to rubber-stamp the approval.Mr Hansen said Wesfarmers and SQM intended to start construction work on the Kwinana processing plant as soon as approvals were in place.“We are currently building the (accommodation) village and the aerodrome at the Mt Holland mine site,” he said.
It expects to start work in the next six months on the mine itself and concentrator at Mt Holland, near Southern Cross in WA, and to be producing lithium hydroxide at Kwinana in the second half of calendar 2024.The Kwinana plant is slated to produce 50,000 tonnes a year initially.
Wesfarmers and SQM could eventually look to double capacity.Mr Hansen said Wesfarmers was keeping an eye on the labour market in WA, where miners have complained of skills shortages.
He said people seemed attracted to working in the lithium sector and that would work in Wesfarmers’ favour.
Wesfarmers hasn’t been involved in mining since selling its coal interests in 2017.
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