Business
Noram Ventures and Alba Minerals Apply for Bulk Sample Permit at Clayton Valley Project
Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - Noram Ventures Inc. (TSX-Venture: NRM and Frankfurt: N7R) (“Noram” or the “Company”) and Alba Minerals Ltd. (“Alba”) (TS
About this update from Noram Lithium Corp
[{"type":"text","content":"Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - Noram Ventures Inc. (TSX-Venture: NRM and Frankfurt: N7R) (“Noram” or the “Company”) and Alba Minerals Ltd. (“Alba”) (TSX-V: AA.V: AXVEF:US Frankfurt: A117RU) are pleased to announce Noram’s 100% owned subsidiary Green Energy Resources is appling to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to collect a 10 tonne sample to proceed with bulk sampling untilizing the Membrane Development Specialists LLC (MDS) bulk testing process on lithium-rich clay samples from its Clayton Valley Project following the successful drilling results from its Zeus and Hades claim groups (see news release of (Nov 21 2017). MDS is a world-leader in membrane technology applications and has extensive experience designing, building, commissioning and operating nanofiltration systems for the mining and oil & gas industries. “In our proprietary process, we are concentrating lithium as a sulfate. The permeate will contain 50–80% of the acid that is used, which is recycled back into the process,” explains Larry Lien, managing director of MDS. The technology enables the use of lithium deposits that previously were viewed as too dilutive for feasible recovery. The technology has been demonstrated at bench scale, and MDS is currently working with stakeholders to develop it for larger-scale operations. Since the process is based on established technologies, and requires no underground mining, Lien is confident in the scaleup potential. Lien projects that a relatively small 1,000-gal/min system could produce 5 tons of lithium carbonate per day. After acidifying the clay, a UF unit removes the suspended solids. Next, a specialized NF membrane removes divalent cations like calcium and magnesium, and in some cases, rare-earth elements (REE) that can be concentrated in this step as well. The resulting permeate is a relatively pure stream of lithium sulfate, chloride or nitrate, which is concentrated with acid. “We concentrate the lithium stream up to 1,000 to 2,000 ppm, depending on what the osmotic pressure will allow,” explains Lien. “We can recover up to 96% of the lithium that is leached out of clays, so it is a pretty attractive solution,” he adds. The focus of the bulk testing is to assess the economics and substantiate the recovery yield of lithium carbonate directly from the mineralized clays using MDS’s environm...