Australia-based lithium producer, Argosy Minerals has started production of battery-grade lithium carbonate (LCE) product from its Rincon Lithium Project located in Salta Province, Argentina.
Image: Lithium ingots. Photo: courtesy of Dnn87/Wikipedia.
Production has started from the stage I pilot plant, with the product recording a Li2CO3 content value of 99.6%. Argosy has 77.5% interest in the Rincon project.
Argosy said that the product is representative of its initial battery-grade specification and can be sent to international cathode and battery-makers for their own quality confirmation and testing.
The company said in a statement: “The LCE product will be prepared for customer samples, where Argosy has made arrangements to provide such to a number of international cathode and battery-makers for their own quality confirmation and testing.”
Subject to customer verification, the initial product will form the basis for the company’s progress towards finalizing a preliminary offtake agreement for stage I Rincon production.
Argosy managing director Jerko Zuvela said: “We are delighted at this significant milestone – to achieve such a result from our Stage 1 500tpa capacity plant is a remarkable success.
“We believe our chemical process pathway is efficient and scalable, and the success being announced today bodes well for the continued development of stages 2 and 3 at the Rincon Lithium Project.”
Argosy expects the process test-works phase to form the basis to further improve and optimize the production process for subsequent commercial sales and substantiate commercial plant designs for stages II and III.
Earlier this year, Argosy announced a maiden mineral resource of 207,957t of LCE at Rincon Lithium Project located within the lithium triangle, which is claimed to be world’s dominant source of lithium production.
At that time, Zuvela said: We are very confident the Resource estimate will support our Project production targets that we expect to report within our Preliminary Economic Assessment, and together with additional drilling works will also enable future upgrades to the maiden JORC Mineral Resource.”