Century Lithium Corp. (TSX-V:LCE, OTCQX:CYDVF) this week announced the addition of a lithium carbonate stage at the company’s pilot plant in Nevada.
CEO Bill Willoughby joined Proactive to discuss this significant milestone, a crucial step in demonstrating Century Lithium's ability to create a finished lithium product directly at its pilot plant.
Willoughby also highlighted the potential benefits of eliminating the need for downstream processing, which could make Century Lithium more competitive in the lithium market.
Proactive: Can you discuss the successful addition of a lithium carbonate stage at your pilot plant in Nevada? This is a big step forward for the company.
Bill Willoughby: Yes, it is. It's actually a really big and good milestone for us. For the last three years since we've been running our pilot plant down in Nevada, we've been shipping material, liquid concentrate containing lithium chloride, off to Canada to have that processed and made into lithium carbonate. We've been successful doing that on a number of occasions, making sample lots of battery-quality lithium, better than 99.9% lithium carbonate purity.
This is a big step forward for us because now we've actually done this down at our pilot plant on site. We made a 20-kilogram, roughly, sample in the first couple of days of working. We worked with Hargrove Engineers and Constructors to develop this end of the process and put it into the pilot plant. Now we're quite successful, so we're very happy with that. And it's a big step forward for us.
Just to clarify, this is part of your 100% owned Angel Island Mine, isn't it?
That is part of the project. And we just finished a feasibility study on the project just a month or so ago. One of the recommendations out of the feasibility study was to add the lithium carbonate stage to the pilot. It's beneficial because it shows that we have a process that can get all the way to the final finished product stage. We can do that with simulated commercial steps and very good progress with the team on site.
Does reducing or eliminating the need for downstream processing make you more competitive in the tough environment?
Well, it does. If we were in the production stage right now, it would. And that's really the goal of all the lithium claystone deposits in Nevada. There's a tremendous amount of lithium resources in Nevada, but they're in lithium clays and claystones, and they have to be liberated once you get them out. The next step is to make a lithium product out of it, like spodumene and hard rock concentrate, which would have to be shipped to a conversion plant somewhere to make lithium. We're able to do that with the lithium claystone right on site. And that's the goal in Nevada, to get to these claystone composites to make a lithium product, a battery-grade material from the project right there and not have to ship another product out to be treated elsewhere.
What are the next steps for the project?
This is important for us because having the lithium carbonate samples from the pilot plant, we'll be able to ship that to interested parties. Interested parties for funding and specific interested parties, being the federal government, perhaps for loans and grants. We'll also be able to take a look at the whole lithium carbonate end process and see how that integrates into the process in terms of recycling and taking fluids from the lithium carbonate stage back into the leaching stage itself. So, big progress on the engineering side. This is also good on the permitting side because we are actively moving forward with our permitting on the project.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and style