Battery Metals

The volume of trade between Russia and South Africa increased by 26 percent to almost $800 million in the first nine months of this year, according to Russian Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Dmitry Kobylkin.
“The trade turnover between our countries is quite good. We hope it will reach $1 billion by the end of the year,” he said, adding that South Africa accounted for 20 percent of Russia’s total trade with all countries in the region.

South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Lindiwe Sisulu stressed that Moscow and Cape Town have “deep diplomatic and historic ties.”

He said: “We believe there is more that can be done in trade; we can export a number of our agricultural products. We can also build partnerships on water and agricultural technology, and education and skills development.”

The sides have signed a roadmap for the implementation of joint projects in the market of platinum group metals, as well as agreement on exploration, extraction and processing of mineral resources until 2025.

South Africa and Russia are by far the world’s biggest producers of platinum. The precious metal has a wide industrial use in the automotive industry, dentistry, weaponry and aeronautics.

“Russia and South Africa, possessing rich reserves of mineral resources, have long traditions in the development of the mining industries, as well as a high level of technological knowledge, have the opportunity to promote the growth of the market of platinum group metals through partnership and cooperation,” said the document, which was released after the ministries meeting.

Moscow and Cape Town are working on joint projects in nuclear energy, subsoil use, oil and gas, as well as projects in agriculture, Kobylkin noted. The two members of BRICS have inked agreements on cooperation in agriculture and water resources during the bloc’s recent 10th summit in Johannesburg.

Camino Minerals announced this week that it is in the process of completing an extensive surface exploration program on the 20,000-hectare Chapitos copper-gold project in southern Peru.

Chapitos is located in the Arequipa province, near the Chala mining hub. This is the Peruvian Iron Oxide Copper Gold belt, which also hosts Minsur’s Mina Justa, an open-pit deposit whose output is of 90,000 tonnes per day.

In a press release, Camino said that since August it has intensified its surface exploration on the Chapitos project with the idea of investigating the resource potential of the property as a whole. The miner also wants to have a better understanding of the geological environment that hosts the copper and gold occurrences located throughout the property, as well as of the structurally controlled copper occurrences that exist within the Diva Fault system, namely the Adrianna, Katty, Pilar, Maria, and Vicky occurrences.

Once the Edmonton-based firm finishes compiling and interpreting the results from the exploration program, it will generate new drill targets that should be completed during Q1 2019.

“We are excited to see results of our teams’ efforts come together. The Chapitos project has widespread copper and gold occurrences with high potential for expansion and new discoveries,” CEO John Williamson said in the media brief.

Williamson also said that the 2019 drilling and exploration program will continue to define and expand mineralized zones at the Adriana and Katty zones, where drilling has intersected 1.31% copper over 82.5m and 1.20% copper over 21.4m.

Trilogy Metals Inc. Nov. 19 reported additional copper-cobalt results from drilling beyond the deposit at Bornite, a part of the company’s Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in the Ambler Mining District of Northwest Alaska.

According to a 2016 calculation, the open-pit deposit at Bornite contains 40.5 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 1.02 percent (913 million pounds) copper; and 141.9 million metric tons of inferred resources averaging 1.74 percent (5.45 million lb) copper.

The deposit also hosts 182.4 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.019 percent (77 million lb) cobalt, according to a resource calculated for the battery metal earlier this year.

This overall resource consists of a near surface resource amenable to open-pit mining and a deeper and higher grade resource currently considered an underground deposit.

The underground portion hosts 57.8 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 2.89 percent (3.68 billion lb) copper and 0.025 percent (32 million lb) cobalt.

Last year, Australia-based South32 Ltd. funded a US$10-million drill program that involved wide-spaced holes aimed at identifying just how much further north the underground portion of Bornite extends. With the northernmost holes all tapping high-grade copper, this drilling did not close off mineralization to the north but did demonstrate the underground portion of Bornite covers at least a 1,500- by 2,500-meter area north of the resource.

This year, South32 funded another US$10.8 million of drilling that involved another 12 holes at Bornite, eight of which were targeted to infill the 300- to 400-meter spaced holes drilled in 2017, with the goal of bringing a portion of this expansion area into the Bornite resource.

The latest round of results is from three holes drilled in the northern resource expansion area.

• RC18-0248, drilled in the western part of the resource expansion area, cut five mineralized intervals: one meter averaging 14.38 percent copper and 0.03 percent cobalt; 21.3 meters averaging 1.73 percent copper and 0.01 percent cobalt; 21 meters averaging 0.93 percent copper an 0.01 percent cobalt; 15.1 meters averaging 1.32 percent copper and 0.01 percent cobalt; and 4.9 meters averaging 2.97 percent copper an 0.08 percent cobalt.

• RC18-0249, drilled about 1,000 meters east-southeast of RC18-0248, cut 38.3 meters averaging 1.12 percent copper an 0.01 percent cobalt.

• RC18-0250, drilled about 150 meters southeast of RC18-0249 did not cut any significant mineralization.

“Out of the two dozen holes that reached target depth that we drilled during the 2017 and 2018 programs, only one – hole RC18-0250 – didn’t hit significant mineralization. All the other holes intersected good grades over potentially mineable widths,” said Trilogy Metals President and CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse.

This includes four holes reported earlier this year:

• RC18-243 drilled about 350 meters east of RC18-0248, cut two meters averaging 2.23 percent copper and 0.01 percent cobalt;

• RC18-244, drilled about 175 meters north of RC18-243, cut 20.4 meters averaging 0.83 percent copper and 0.02 percent cobalt;

• RC18-246, drilled from the same pad as RC18-249 but at different orientation cut 19.6 meters averaging 2.06 percent copper and 0.01 percent cobalt, 6.1 meters averaging 2.36 percent copper and 0.02 percent cobalt, and 7.6 meters averaging 1.04 percent copper and 0.02 percent cobalt; and

• RC18-247, drilled about 375 meters northwest of RC18-246, cut 33.4 meters averaging 0.82 percent copper and 0.01 percent cobalt, and 20.1 meters averaging 4.55 percent copper and 0.17 percent cobalt.

In addition to the expansion drilling to the north, four holes were drilled this year within the current resource area, assays are pending for these infill holes.

The West African nation of Mali is set to begin lithium production by 2020 as companies recently discovered 694,000 tons of exploitable reserves, Reuters reports.

For those unaware of just how critical the abundance of this mineral is to the tech industry, lithium has become one of the most in-demand commodities in the world after everything from smartphones to electric vehicles has shifted toward a reliance on lithium-ion batteries. From Apple electronics to Tesla Model 3 cars, some of the biggest tech companies and automakers on the globe depend on lithium resources to maintain their product.

The discoveries took place in Mali’s Goulamina and Bouogoni projects, respectively owned by Australian mineral explorer Biriman and the U.K.’s Kodal Minerals, and comprised 48 million tons of ore reserves including the stunning amount of lithium. Of course, these figures represent merely what has been found so far.

“The numbers could go up as the research continues,” said Yaya Djire, chief of the geology department at Mali’s mines ministry. “Biriman should start production within two years.”

Up until last year, Mali had only issued two permits for lithium mining exploration. There’s been a dramatic increase since then, however.

“Since 2017, a dozen exploration permits have been delivered to companies, all located in the mining area of Bougouni, which is the main area of lithium deposits,” Djire explained.

As it stands, the world’s lithium reserves sit at around 16 million tons. That makes this discovery a substantial find, as it would comprise a substantial 4.34 percent of that total. The majority of lithium production is centered in Chile and Australia.

Most recently, Tesla entered an agreement with China’s top lithium producer to satisfy its electric vehicle battery needs, which would provide the automaker with nearly a fifth of the lithium it requires to build its battery cells. Mali state officials hope that the country’s latest discovery will provide both the local economy with a significant boost and those companies eager to utilize its resources with the supply they seek.

Lithium Australia’s wholly-owned subsidiary VSPC Ltd has completed a world first; producing lithium-ion battery cathode material and lithium-ion batteries from tri-lithium phosphate that came directly from mine waste.

The feat was achieved using VSPC’s ground-breaking SiLeach® process, which removes the requirement for generation of high-purity lithium hydroxide or carbonate – long seen as one of the most cost-intensive and challenging steps in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries.

The tri-lithium phosphate was converted to lithium-iron-phosphate cathode material at the advanced electrochemical laboratory and pilot plant facility in Brisbane, Queensland, operated by VSPC.

The cathode material was characterised by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy and determined to be of similar quality to VSPC-standard lithium-iron-phosphate material. Lithium-ion batteries were subsequently produced and tested under a range of charge and discharge conditions and the cells achieved equivalent performance to VSPC’s advanced cathode powders using lithium carbonate as the manufacturing feed, Lithium Australia reported.

“Battery performance compares very favourably against cells using standard VSPC cathode material produced with industry-standard lithium carbonate,” the company added.

The demonstrated ability to by-pass lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide as battery precursors provides potential to significantly reduce the cost of battery manufacture, according to Lithium Australia.

“Not only that, the use of mine waste in the battery production cycle can provide greater sustainability to global lithium resources.”

The company is also developing the process for direct production of cathode powders from lithium brines to not only eliminate the requirement to produce high-purity lithium hydroxide or carbonate, but to reduce the requirement for evaporation ponds – one of the more capital-intensive aspects of setting up a lithium brine operation.

Lithium Australia Managing Director Adrian Griffin said: “The most notable aspect of this achievement is its simplicity and ability to streamline the processes and cost required to produce lithium-ion battery cathode materials.

“The broader application to lithium brine exploitation provides enormous potential for that part of the lithium industry, by removing the cost intensive route to lithium hydroxide – the direct use of lithium phosphate to produce cathode powders may do that.”

Lithium Australia’s VSPC subsidiary has been one of the fastest movers in this growing space, completing a large-scale pilot plant to demonstrate its SiLeach process at commercial scale earlier this year.

The company develops processing technology for the manufacture of nano-scale battery cathode powders (via its subsidiary VSPC), the recycling of lithium-ion batteries and low-energy recovery of lithium and other metals from silicates with its 100%-owned SiLeach hydrometallurgical process.

Lithium Australia NL reported that its wholly owned subsidiary VSPC Ltd has successfully produced Li-ion battery cathode material, and Li-ion batteries (LIBs), from tri-lithium phosphate produced directly from mine waste using the SiLeach process.

SiLeach background. During conventional processing, lithium is recovered only from spodumene concentrates, not lithium micas, which until now have been something of a forgotten resource.

Conventional processing to extract lithium also incorporates an energy-intensive roasting phase, occurring at temperatures of more than 1,000 ˚C, followed by sulfation bake, undertaken at about 250 ˚C. Once the residue produced is cooled and leached with water, only lithium (as a sulfate) is recovered, and it is then further processed to produce lithium carbonate.

Unlike conventional processing, SiLeach is a hydrometallurgical process, so no roasting phase is required, which reduces energy consumption. Moreover, there is potential for SiLeach to derive all its energy requirements from waste heat generated during the production of sulfuric acid, which would further reduce operating inputs.

With SiLeach, a combination of sulfuric acid and halides is used to dissociate the strong bonds in silicate lattices at atmospheric pressure, meaning that only simple mechanical components are necessary to conduct the process. Reactions occur rapidly at about 90 ˚C, which is also a distinct advantage in terms of constraining plant footprint and reducing capital costs.

Also unlike conventional processing, all metals within the target minerals are soluble in SiLeach, creating the opportunity to generate significant by-product credits. Finally, SiLeach produces very clean lithium solutions, an advantage in terms of the subsequent production of battery-grade lithium carbonate.

LFP and batteries from waste. This process removes the requirement for generation of high-purity lithium hydroxide or carbonate which has long been one of the most cost-intensive, and challenging steps in the manufacture of LIBs.

The tri-lithium phosphate was converted to lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cathode material at the advanced electrochemical laboratory and pilot plant facility in Brisbane, Queensland operated by VSPC. The proprietary processes used to generate the LFP nanoparticles is covered by patents granted to VSPC.

The cathode material was characterized by XRD and SEM, and determined to be of similar quality to VSPC standard LFP material.

LIBs (2032 coin cells) were subsequently produced and tested under a range of charge and discharge conditions and the cells achieved equivalent performance to VSPC’s advanced cathode powders which use lithium carbonate as the manufacturing feed. Battery performance compares very favorably against cells using standard VSPC cathode material produced with industry standard lithium carbonate.

The demonstrated ability to bypass lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide as battery precursors offers the potential to reduce the cost battery manufacture significantly. Not only that, the use of mine waste in the battery production cycle can provide greater sustainability to global lithium resources.

Lithium Australia is also developing the process for direct production of cathode powders from lithium brines, to not only eliminate the requirement to produce high-purity lithium hydroxide or carbonate but to reduce the requirement for evaporation ponds.

Mine waste to LIB without the requirement to produce a lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate precursor is a world first. This has the potential to provide a commercial outcome to many stranded resources creating ethical and sustainable supply in the process.