American Manganese Inc (CVE:AMY) (OTCQB:AMYZF) (FRA:2AM) has said that its bench-scale project at the Wenden stockpile property in Arizona, USA is nearly complete and advancing towards providing a domestic source of electrolytic manganese metal (EMM).
The project was funded by an award in late 2020 from the United States Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) to perform work on the US government's 322,000 metric ton manganese stockpile located near Wenden and assess the viability of production using American Manganese's ground-breaking recovery process.
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Larry Reaugh, the CEO of American Manganese, said the project aimed to determine a "model processing flowsheet for the DLA's consideration in scaled up continuation work consistent with a future commercial processing facility".
"Following the completion of the project, I believe our Wenden Stockpile reclamation and advanced material processing flowsheet will demonstrate to the DLA the potential prospects for domestically produced EMM, which is currently zero, and help reduce U.S. manganese reliance on China.
"According to the last publicly-released National Defense Stockpile Requirements Report, the U.S. Department of Defense rates the lack of EMM to the Defense Industrial Base during a national emergency as 'significant'. There is no direct substitute for manganese in the production of aluminum alloys and some types of steel alloys," Reaugh added in a statement.
The company listed the highlights of the project so far:
- Collected 14 representative samples from the Wenden Stockpile weighing a total of 550 pounds
- Achieved up to 99% extraction of manganese during leaching studies
- Enhanced the company's original flowsheet which is expected to further improve process efficiencies and reduce capital costs
- Prepared purified manganese sulfate solution as feed for EMM production
The manganese market has been transformed with the rapid commercialization of electric vehicles (EVs).
American Manganese's patented manganese process is also the cornerstone tech in its lithium-ion battery cathode recycling process, which extracts lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt from lithium-ion battery cathode materials.
Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors