Lake Resources Produces Battery-Grade Lithium Carbonate from Kachi

Lithium explorer and developer Lake Resources NL is pleased to announce a major step, confirming that it will use Lilac Solutions' breakthrough technology to produce a large number of battery-grade lithium carbonate samples in California with a purity of 99.9% from 20, 000 liters of brine samples from Lake's Kachi Brine Lithium Mine project in January 13, 2020.

The samples will arrive in California within two weeks and will be processed in the test equipment assembly using the direct extraction ion exchange process of Lilac Solutions. The samples have been shipped out of Kachi and are on their way to California.

Starting in March, the company will begin delivering products to downstream customers and will begin quality reviews with more of its lithium carbonate partners to demonstrate the scalability of future production plans.

Lake Resources confirms lithium carbonate production plans image

Steve Promnitz, Managing Director of Lake, said: "We are currently focusing on producing more battery-grade lithium carbonate from Kachi brine, which, together with the test equipment components, will lay the foundation for a binding off-take agreement for Kachi brine products."

"Lake Resources has carried out some pioneering business activities over the past 24 months to build awareness in the battery and electric vehicles. In the meantime, we have demonstrated our projects and future products to many industry insiders, including well-known brands around the world. This work is considerable and will pay off in 2020, and we can now quickly and easily re-work with our underwriters and begin quality reviews of sufficient quantities of Li carbonate samples with extremely low levels of the impurities-a key for the industry benchmark."

"We look forward to reporting to shareholders when the brine arrives at the Lilac plant in California." Lake's goal is to produce products that attract high prices, high quality, and low impurities. Laboratory tests show that lithium with lithium concentration of 30000-60000 mg/L can be produced from brine with a lithium content of ~ 300000 mg/L in a few hours by the Lilac process."

The Kachi project is one of the top ten brine lithium resources in the world. It has an initial resource estimate of 4.4 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent (1 million tons at the marked level and 3.4 million tons at the presumed level) in a larger-scale exploration target area.

The first-phase engineering research completed in December 2018 showed that the company's production costs were likely to be among the lowest quartiles in the world, with a high recovery rate (80-90 percent) compared with lithium recovery rates, which are usually less than 50 percent in traditional brine operations in South America. Lilac's technology can also reduce production time to a few hours, while the standard evaporation process requires a long waiting period of 9-24 months to produce a concentration suitable for processing.

Importantly, Lilac's direct extraction process provides a sustainable solution for lithium extraction from brine for Lake Resources. Once lithium carbonate extraction is completed, the treated brine is returned to the aquifer, eliminating the need for traditional evaporation pools. This is catering to the growing needs of electric vehicle manufacturers (OEMs) and battery makers, illustrating their ability to use a sustainable and scalable raw material supply chain.

 

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