Rio Tinto Starts Producing Lithium from Waste Rock

Rio Tinto is starting pilot production of lithium in California from waste rock instead of excavating new areas. According to MiningNews.net, the company found that the company could become the largest producer for metal batteries in the United States for the fast-growing electric vehicle market without newly developed mine.

Rio Tinto is an Anglo-Australian multinational and one of the world's largest metals and mining corporations. The company has grown through a long series of mergers and acquisitions to place itself among the world leaders in the production of many commodities, including aluminum, iron ore, copper, uranium, and diamonds.

After trials, the company made a breakthrough in the beneficiation process at the Boron mine in California, USA, and was able to extract battery-grade lithium carbonate products from the waste rock.

Rio's original hope was to find gold and other minerals from the waste rock, and found that traces of lithium at a concentration higher than domestic projects under development in the US.

Bold Baatar, energy and minerals chief executive of Rio Tinto, said that if the trials continue to prove successful and there is no need for further mining, the mine has the potential to become America’s largest domestic producer of battery-grade lithium.

Preliminary small tests have shown that the metal can be recovered by grinding and leaching. The Boren waste mine is available for 90 years. According to Bold Baatar, the raw materials needed have been mined, and the production does not require much energy, and the project can continue to profit. However, the challenge currently facing the project is how to optimize the process to achieve commercial production.

At present, the company has built a pilot plant that will be able to produce 10 tonnes a year of lithium-carbonate in Boren mine. The pilot plant will run for a few months, but Rio Tinto hopes to increase its investment to $10 million at this stage. If that works, the company would consider in a $50 million industrial-scale plant to generate 5,000 tonnes a year — enough for around 15,000 Tesla Model S batteries.

The company has been interested in the mineral for some time and is ready to decide whether to develop the Jadar mine in Serbia. The mine will be the world's first sodium borosilicate project.

Besides producing lithium from the waste rock, Rio Tinto also hopes to produce monazite from Madagascar's tailings and from the Kennecott copper mine in Arizona to produce rhenium. Rare earth contented in monazite is 50 percent, and rare earths and rhenium are both listed in the US critical minerals catalog.

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