Canadian chemicals company Standard Lithium has produced its first quantity of battery-quality lithium carbonate at a prototype pilot plant.
The chemical company said the lithium carbonate (>99.56% purity) was produced at the company’s lithium carbonate crystallisation pilot plant operated by Saltworks Technologies— at their facility in British Columbia.
Dr Andy Robinson, president and chief operating officer of Standard Lithium, said: “Whilst we had previously made ‘battery quality’ carbonate at bench scale, using our proprietary technology, we consider it an important milestone that we can achieve the same very high levels of purity at the larger scale of our prototype pilot.”
The company now has “all the confidence needed to commence detailed design on the main crystallisation pilot plant, and this work is now ongoing”, Robinson said.
Standard Lithium’s flagship project is in southern Arkansas, where it is testing and proving the commercial viability of lithium extraction from more than 150,000 acres of permitted brine operations using the company’s proprietary “selective extraction technology”.
Standard Lithium said it is also “pursuing the resource development” of more than 30,000 acres of separate brine leases located in southwestern Arkansas and approximately 45,000 acres of mineral leases located in the Mojave Desert in California”.
