10,000 L/day DLE Pilot Plant Ships to LithiumBank’s Calgary Facility
10,000 L/day DLE Pilot Plant Ships to LithiumBank’s
Calgary Facility
Calgary, Alberta. December 11, 2023 – LithiumBank Resources Corp. (TSX-V: LBNK)
(OTCQX: LBNKF) (“LithiumBank” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that the G2L
Greenview Resources Inc. (“G2L”) Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) pilot plant is now in transit
to LithiumBank’s Calgary facility. Once completed, the facility will have capacity to process up
to 10,000 L/d of brine and yield up to 3 kg/d LCE. Commencing in early 2024, several piloting
campaigns are planned as the Boardwalk Project advances into its feasibility studies phase of
development. The Company also anticipates that the facility will accelerate the development
of the Company’s Park Place, Estevan, South, and Kindersley properties.
The pilot plant has been constructed in Australia by Clean TeQ Water on the behalf of G2L
and is based on G2L’s Continuous Direct Lithium Extraction (cDLE®) technology. As seen in
recent testwork results (Reported Nov. 22, 2023), the cDLE® process utilizes an ion exchange
material (sorbent) designed to selectively extract lithium from the brine while rejecting most
contaminants. In the context of the Boardwalk Project, the configuration of the pilot adsorption
and elution stages has been purposefully designed to maximize extraction of lithium from the
brine. Similarly, the selectivity of the sorbent and elution chemistry allows strong rejection of
typical impurities in the brine such as sodium, calcium and chloride. This results in a clean,
lithium-rich concentrate suitable for further refining.
At the facility in Calgary, the cDLE® process will demonstrate the cost and process
advantages of using common industrial reagents such as quicklime and sulfuric acid. The
operating cost benefits of this change in reagent suite will be quantified in an upd ated
Boardwalk Project Preliminary Economic Assessment. Senior process engineers from G2L
will head up the installation of the pilot and the first 100 hours of processing. G2L will continue
to lend support throughout the entire piloting program which is intended to last up to 18 months
following the first 100 hours of operation.
With a processing capacity of up to 10,000 L/d of brine, the Calgary facility will represent one
of the largest DLE pilot plants in North America. The pilot plant represents an approximate
1:5,000 scale to the future, commercial production modules which is consistent with scale-up
factors used in other hydrometallurgical processes. Within the pilot plant, sufficiently large ion
exchange equipment has been installed to permit direct scale -up of these process steps to
the commercial plant, accelerating the Boardwalk Project development.
During operation, the pilot plant will be targeting one of the industry’s highest lithium
recoveries. This is seen as achievable for the Boardwalk project given the project’s careful
staging of adsorption and elution contactors, along with the characterist ics of the sorbent.
Specifically, experiences from industrial ion exchange processes used for the recovery of
precious (gold) and energy (uranium) metals have been leveraged in formulating the
Boardwalk DLE flowsheet. This formulation included a trade -off assessment of lithium
recovery and capital cost which was undertaken for the purposes of the upcoming updated
PEA. As a result, the pilot plant will assess the performance of five contactor stages with
results to follow in the PEA.
Figure 1: LithiumBank’s pilot plant as shown in G2L’s manufacturing facility in Melbourne, Australia ,
prior to shipment.
Furthermore, G2L's experience in pilot testing of continuous ion exchange for recovery of other
metals, including nickel and cobalt, at a similar scale in similar pilot equipment, provides
confidence that recovery using counter -current adsorption contactors can be predicted from
laboratory scale test work.
The cDLE® pilot plant in transit is a variation of a pilot plant that was designed and constructed
by the Clean TeQ Water technical team to extract nickel and cobalt by ion exchange from acid
leached lateritic ore in the Sunrise Energy Metals project. The plant was run over several
campaigns and the data were subsequently used for a Bankable Feasibility Study (BFS) on
the production of battery-grade nickel and cobalt sulfates. The Boardwalk Project cDLE® plant
uses the same basic configuration, with critica l design changes incorporated to ensure
maximum lithium extraction from the brine, and the production of a high purity eluate
containing a high lithium concentration.
A video showing the cDLE® pilot plant prior to shipping to Calgary can be viewed at the link
below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcjT8e5nHlc
About LithiumBank Resources Corp.
LithiumBank Resources Corp. (TSX-V: LBNK) (OTCQX: LBNKF), is a publicly traded lithium
company that is focused on developing its two flagship projects, Boardwalk and Park Place,
in Western Canada. The Company holds 2,480,196 acres of brownfield & exploration lithium
brine permits, across 3 districts in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In May 2023, LithiumBank
completed an initial robust preliminary economic assessment of its Boardwalk pr oject that
targets a 31,350 TPA operation with a pre -tax USD $2.7B NPV and a 21.6% IRR with the
potential for a number of near term enhancements. The Company will continue to de- risk its
assets through detailed geological modelling and advanced engineering.
For more information see the Company’s Boardwalk Lithium Brine Project Preliminary
Economic Assessment Technical report entitled “Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) for
LithiumBank Resources Boardwalk Lithium -Brine Project in West - Central Alberta, Canada”
effectively dated June 16, 2023 filed on SEDAR+ (www.sedarplus.ca) on June 23, 2023 and
on the Company’s website (www.lithiumbank.ca).
Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.
There is no guarantee that all or any part of the mineral resource will be converted into a
mineral reserve. The estimate of mineral resources may be materially aff ected by geology,
environment, permitting, legal, title, taxation, socio -political, marketing, or other relevant
issues. A preliminary economic assessment is preliminary in nature as it includes a portion of
inferred mineral resources that are considered t oo speculative geologically to have the
economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral
reserves, and there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized.
About G2L Greenview Resources Inc.
Go2Lithium Inc. was formed in early 2023 as a 50/50 joint venture with Computational
Geosciences Inc (CGI), a subsidiary of the Robert Friedland -chaired Ivanhoe Electric Inc.
(NYSE:IE) and Clean TeQ Water (ASX:CNQ). Please see Clean TeQ’s case studies for
additional information on their suite of water treatment and metal extraction technologies.
The scientific and technical disclosure in this news release has been reviewed and approved
by Mr. Kevin Piepgrass (Chief Operations Officer, LithiumBank Resources Corp.), who is a
Member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Al berta (APEGA)
and the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of British
Columbia (APEGBC) and is a Qualified Person (QP) for the purposes of National Instrument
43-101. Mr. Piepgrass consents to the inclusion of the data in the form and context in which it
appears.
Contact:
LithiumBank
Rob Shewchuk
CEO & Director
(778) 987-9767
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defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy
or accuracy of this release.
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