Galan test work yields battery-grade lithium carbonate

Laboratory testing has proved that battery grade lithium carbonate can be produced from lithium concentrate sourced from Galan’s Hombre Muerto West lithium project.

Proof of concept testing using brine concentrate with better than 6% lithium content successfully produced a lithium carbonate product with a 99.88% purity Anything above the 99.5% level is considered battery grade material.

Of equal importance to Galan Lithium (ASX:GAL) is that the test also delivered great results for the removal of SO4, boron, calcium and magnesium, which can be difficult contaminants to remove.

Further opportunities have also been identified to improve results and these will be adopted in future test work activities at both laboratory and pilot plant levels.

“While this is early days, we are excited to demonstrate this first step as a proof of concept of high purity lithium carbonate while we still have room for improvement >99.88% LCE,” managing director Juan Pablo Vargas de la Vega said.

“Importantly, from our studies, Galan’s high grade and low impurities brine has demonstrated that we can produce high purity lithium carbonate at a low cost.

“The company continues to add flexibility on the road to production with different added value routes as lithium concentrate and now battery grade lithium carbonate.”

Test work

The test work was carried out by Ad-Infinitum, which initially optimised the concentration stage to produce a cleaner concentrate that reduced reagent consumption and operating expenditure costs.

Further reagent cost reductions were identified at the next stage as a cleaner concentrate requires less reagents and volume impurities to be removed for the precipitation of lithium carbonate.

This resulted in the production of a battery grade product without the need to carry out an additional purification stage.

This article was developed in collaboration with Galan Lithium, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.