Business
American Lithium Announces Strong Progress on Falchani Flow Sheet Optimization and Intent to Commence Pilot Work During H2 2024
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 27, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American Lithium Corp. (“American Lithium” or the “Company”) (TSX-V:LI | Nasdaq:AMLI | Frankfurt:
About this update from American Lithium Corp.
[{"type":"text","content":" VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 27, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American Lithium Corp. (“American Lithium” or the “Company”) (TSX-V:LI | Nasdaq:AMLI | Frankfurt:5LA1) is pleased to provide an update on the optimization of the Falchani processing flow-sheet. This update is based on recently completed, and ongoing, test work at Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization Laboratories in Sydney, Australia (“ANSTO”) in conjunction with TECMMINE in Lima, Peru (“TECMMINE”). The unique volcanic style of lithium mineralization at Falchani, combined with low impurity content allows its flow-sheet to resemble more conventional mining / processing flow-sheets versus most hardrock lithium projects where concentrates are produced and then shipped elsewhere for further refining into higher quality products. Falchani’s flow-sheet utilizes warm sulfuric acid leaching and impurity removal steps to produce a high purity lithium carbonate (“LC”) end product on site with purity in excess of 99.5%, typically the threshold for battery grade LC. This helps drive the robust economics, particularly the low operating costs, highlighted in the Company’s original and recently updated Preliminary Economic Assessments (“PEA’s”). There is no need for additional refining steps offshore. The Company believes it can further reduce acid consumption and reagent costs and optimize the production of LC as well as highly economic / strategic by-products by implementing a number of additional tried and tested hydrometallurgical processing steps into the core flow-sheet. This work has yielded strong results, and the Company currently intends to commence piloting work for its Falchani Project during H2, 2024. HIGHLIGHTS FROM LATEST TEST WORK ON FALCHANI FLOW-SHEET: Reduction of sulfuric acid consumption by approximately 50% from 480-500 kg per tonne (“kg/t”) (February 2024 PEA), down to 240 kg/t processed by utilizing counter-current leaching and simple recycling of acid-containing streams coupled with leach optimization. Reduced acid consumption / recycling also has the implication of considerably reducing reagent requirements during final waste neutralization, which positively impacts the projected operating costs further. Potential to further simplify the flow-sheet by employing Solvent Extraction (“SX”): Initial testing with SX has demonstrated potential ...