February sundowner: news of lithium and of the passing of a larger than life man of mining

Last night's Cornish Mining Sundowner was held at the County Arms Hotel Truro, with an attendance of about twenty.

We regularly have geologists and metallurgists from Cornish Lithium at the sundowners, as their lithium from brine operation is based locally in west Cornwall. They are also developing lithium extraction from mica in granite in the china clay area of east Cornwall near St. Austell, as is the nearby company British Lithium Ltd. It was good to have British Lithium represented at the sundowner last night by their hydrometallurgy manager Katia Omelchuk, who brought along some of her friends, some former British Lithium employees.

Katia (centre) and friends

British Lithium is focused on sustainable, chemical-free, processing and an entirely novel approach to the commercial production of battery-grade lithium carbonate from mica and is planning to produce 21,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate each year from its single quarrying and refining site.

The latest results indicate that the company’s unique process of sustainably extracting lithium from ores without using acids or other corrosive chemicals, called Li-Sep, is consistently achieving a recovery rate of more than 90%. The high recovery rate is allowing the company to go on to produce a lithium carbonate grading better than 99.9% purity.

The company is currently ramping up from pilot-scale operations towards full-scale production. “For the past few months, we have been focusing on the maximisation of lithium recovery in the calcination and leaching stages. We are very pleased to announce that the results are very positive. By the end of this year, we hope to generate enough data to complete our pre-feasibility study. There is huge global demand for lithium and the UK needs to have its own domestic supply" said Katia.

Many of the sundowner regulars were at the Mawnan Old Church, near Falmouth, five days ago for the funeral of one of Cornish mining's larger than life characters, Malcolm Hooper, who died at the age of 81. Although a few years older than me I always referred to him as one of my students, as he was in my mineral processing class for a module on the Camborne School of Mines MSc Mining course, from which he graduated in 1988. He then travelled the world as a mining consultant, but attended the Cornish sundowners regularly until the onset of his long illness a few years ago.

Malcolm (left) with Barbara Wills and Bentley Orchard at the October 2015 sundowner

A true polymath, among his many accomplishments he was an expert skier and we learned a lot from him when he joined the CSM ski trip to Meribel, France, in 1994.

Malcolm with me and Amanda, off-piste in France, 1994

The sundowner returns to Falmouth next month, so if you are in the area please call in and see us at the Chain Locker on Thursday March 16th from 5.30pm.

@barrywills