Cutting edge lithium technology for Cornwall

There is a lot going on at Cornish Lithium Ltd. In September I reported that the company had found “globally significant” lithium grades in geothermal waters and is preparing to extract lithium in a zero-carbon operation.  These geothermal waters are rapidly becoming recognised as the ultimate ethical source of lithium, as Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technology will be used to extract dissolved lithium compounds from the water using ionic adsorbents and/or ion exchange membranes, with the residual water being returned to depth via a borehole. Using DLE technology Cornish Lithium aims to maximise product recovery from the geothermal waters in a small footprint, energy efficient extraction plant, which will be powered by an on-site geothermal power plant. Lithium will be extracted from the water from the geothermal power plant's 5.2km deep borehole and the water will then be reinjected into the rock.

Cornish Lithium announced this week that, following its maiden hard rock lithium drilling programme earlier this year it is to accelerate this project within an existing china clay pit near St Austell in east Cornwall, following the successful production of nominal battery-grade lithium hydroxide, achieved using Australian Stock-Exchange listed Lepidico Ltd's technologies on lithium mica samples. 

Cornish Lithium said it had acquired a technology licence from Lepidico, which provided it with a metallurgical processing solution for the Trelavour Downs project. The company will now proceed towards bulk metallurgical testing and the construction of a pilot plant using Lepidico’s proprietary L-Max® and LOH-Max technologies. Work so far has indicated the potential of this technology to produce battery-grade lithium in Cornwall without the need for further refining, thus offering a complete on-site solution.

The Lepidico pilot plant in action July 2019
Source: Lepidico Ltd

Unlike other hard rock lithium extraction processes, the L-Max® process does not require costly pyrometallurgical processing routes in order to extract and recover the valuable lithium. The hydrometallurgical L-Max® process involves direct atmospheric leaching of lithium mica and impurity removal stages with subsequent lithium carbonate precipitation. It differs considerably from the processing of spodumene, which requires high temperature decrepitation and sulphate roasting prior to lithium recovery. This novel process is simpler, and is expected to have lower energy requirements than existing lithium recovery processes. 

LOH-Max produces lithium hydroxide, which currently attracts a premium price compared with lithium carbonate and is in strong demand

The licence to these technologies would allow development of the low-carbon extraction of lithium from zinnwaldite and polylithionite mica ores in the St Austell region. The Company believes that this work will accelerate domestic production of battery quality lithium chemicals for the UK automotive and battery industry as well as generating a significant number of skilled jobs in the St Austell area of Cornwall.

“The next phase of work, which will shortly commence at Trelavour, will run in parallel with studies which continue to advance the company’s lithium in geothermal waters projects across Cornwall. In particular, the forthcoming construction of the lithium pilot plant at United Downs, will enable the company to trial direct lithium extraction technology at the United Downs Deep Geothermal Project together with partners Geothermal Engineering,” commented founder and CEO Jeremy Wrathall. 

@barrywills

IMPC Distinguished Service Award to Prof. Eric Forssberg

It was a pleasure to hear that Prof. Eric Forssberg has been awarded the International Mineral Processing Council's Distinguished Service Award (DSA).

I know from my own experience of winning this award in 2014 how proud Eric must feel, and ironically it was he who presented me with the award in Santiago-Chile.

Prof Eric Forssberg presents me with the DSA in 2014,
watched by Profs. Yoon, Yianatos and O'Connor

Eric now becomes one of the three living recipients of this coveted award, Prof. Douglas Fuerstenau winning the award in 2018.

Chile 2014 with Profs. Forssberg and Fuerstenau

Eric Forssberg has enjoyed an outstanding and distinguished career in the field of Mineral Processing.  He has served as a full professor of mineral processing at Lulea University of Technology, Sweden since 1974. He has a PhD in mineral processing from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden and served as dean of the faculty of engineering for the period of 1980-1990.

For the purposes of the present nomination for the IMPC Distinguished Service Award Professor Forssberg attend his first Congress in Leningrad in 1968 and has attended every International Mineral Processing Congress since then. He joined the Council of the IMPC in Cagliari in 1974 and served as a member for 46 years until he retired from Council in 2020. He was elected as the President of the Council in Cannes in 1985 and served until 2006 in at the Congress in Istanbul. In 1988 he was chairman of the organising committee for the XVI IMPC in Stockholm, the first congress that I attended.

One for the history books:  Prof. Forssberg with 5 Lifetime Achievement Award winners,
in Quebec 2016. Profs. Janusz Laskowski (2008), Graeme Jameson (2016),
Ponisseril Somasundaran (2016), Roe-Hoan Yoon (2014) and Jim Finch (2020)

Professor Forssberg is nominated for this Award due to his huge and distinguished contribution both to the Council over such a long period but also to the global mineral processing community in so many different ways. 

I look forward to seeing Eric and his wife Ebba when he is presented with his award at the XXXI IMPC in Melbourne in August 2022.

Ebba and Eric Forssberg in Cape Town in November last year

@barrywills

Critical Elements at a glance

Dmitri Mendeleev published his first periodic table of the elements in 1869 and the modern version adorns the walls of probably every chemistry laboratory in the world.

It has been presented in various guises but no better than the one published last year by the European Chemical Society and I thank my old friend and CSM colleague Richard Edwards for making me aware of this. It is a wonderful way of seeing at a glance that the elements are from finite resources and there is not an inexhaustible supply. Protecting endangered elements needs to be achieved on a number of levels. As individuals, we need to question whether upgrades to our phones and other electronic devices are truly necessary, and we need to make sure that we recycle correctly to avoid old electronics ending up in landfill sites or polluting the environment. 

In a recent posting I questioned the promises of politicians such as Boris Johnson who make overly optimistic demands on the progress towards a "green revolution" and the European Chemical Society hopes that this unique and thought-provoking Periodic Table will lead to reflection and ultimately action.

The area allotted to each element in the table reflects its abundance on earth, and is colour-coded according to its likely future availability. The elements used in smart phones are also identified, which is of particular importance as a smartphone uses around 30 of these elements, many of which, due to increasing scarcity, may be of great concern in future, particularly with the need to mine more and more of these elements to satisfy the 4th Industrial Revolution. Around 10 million smartphones are discarded or replaced every month in the European Union alone, so we need to carefully look at our tendencies to waste and improperly recycle such items. 

Good examples are elements such as gallium and indium which are essential in smart phones. Gallium nitride is a semi-conductor, and without indium, alloyed with tin (also in limited supply) we would not have touch screens. They are used in tiny quantities in each smart phone, but as around 2 billion phones are manufactured each year the supply is becoming critical.

There are no indium or gallium mines, however. These metals are the byproducts of refining base metals, particularly zinc ores, and as can be seen in the table, zinc is also under increasing threat due to increased use, mainly for galvanising other metals such as iron. Metals vital to the new industrial revolution, such as copper, lithium and neodymium are all shaded yellow, showing a future risk to supply.

It is worth looking at two elements whose supply is rarely questioned, the two most abundant elements in the Universe, hydrogen and helium.  Hydrogen is the primordial atom, the fuel for the stars, the primary product of fusion being helium.

Hydrogen is in great abundance on earth, but does not occur naturally, being present in a multitude of molecules, the most common being water. It is a potential competitor to the electric vehicle, petrol and air being replaced in the internal combustion engine by the combustion of hydrogen, and oxygen from the air, to produce a harmless exhaust of water vapour.

Hydrogen is not cheap to produce and store, however. The majority of hydrogen (~95%) is currently produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas, partial oxidation of methane, and coal gasification. Other methods include the energy intensive electrolysis of water, the opposite of what occurs in the hydrogen fuel cell.

Although helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, it is very rare on earth, being mostly created by the natural radioactive decay of heavy radioactive elements such as thorium and uranium. It is trapped with natural gas from which it is extracted commercially by low-temperature fractional distillation. Helium is an important constituent in deep diving gas mixtures, replacing nitrogen, which causes narcosis and 'the bends' when compressed air is breathed at depth. It has the lowest boiling point of any element, at -269C, just a few degrees above absolute zero (-273C). This makes it of key importance for superconducting magnets used in MRI scanners and other applications, which must be supercooled to generate the hugely powerful magnetic fields required.

Although helium is a critical element, some of it is wasted, as it is used to fill party and wedding balloons. Once the balloons are released they rise and eventually burst, but of course the helium does not sink to earth, it rises and is lost in space.  Although the amount that is used in party balloons is fairly small compared to its other main uses, it provides an example of the trivial use of something we should be valuing a little bit more.

This version of the Periodic Table should, I feel, be on the walls of every scientist and politician. It provides a constant reminder of how much we should value and conserve our natural resources, and how true it is that everything we use is either mined or grown.

@barrywills

November: the second lockdown, the first real glimmers of hope and news of a new Cornwall-led research centre

In the first week of the month regional lockdowns in England were replaced by a lockdown of the whole country, although not as stringent as the April lockdown, schools, colleges and universities remaining open. Nevertheless this was frustrating down here in Cornwall, where infection rates are particularly low.

On the fight against Coronavirus there was good news from USA that President-Elect Joe Biden has the pandemic as his top priority, something which his ungracious Presidential loser never had, despite the virus raging through the country.

And on the 9th of the month news of the first 'milestone' vaccine was announced, which preliminary results show can provide 95% protection. The developers, Pfizer and BioNTech, described it as "a great day for science and humanity" and a week later the US biotech firm Moderna  announced results on a vaccine with an efficacy of 94.5%. Early data released on the Sputnik V vaccine, developed in Russia, suggests that it is 92% effective. 

And just a week ago more good news, that the Oxford vaccine is almost ready to roll out, with very promising results, especially as it is cheaper and easier to store and transport than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. There is growing confidence that these vaccines can help end the pandemic, but there are still huge challenges ahead, despite some scientists suggesting life could be back to normal by spring. Once the vaccines are approved, the race will be on to overcome the biggest logistics challenge in history, to distribute them around the globe,

In October Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to make Britain the "Saudi Arabia of wind", pledging that offshore wind will produce enough electricity to power every home by 2030 (posting of 12th October), and this month he put more pressure on 2030 by announcing that the UK will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, rather than the original 2040 (posting of 21 July 2019).

I am sure that the Government has given a great deal of thought as to where the critical metals will come from to do this (posting of 23rd November). Maybe they were aware of more good news from Cornwall this month. At the beginning of the month it was announced that Camborne School of Mines (CSM) will lead a pioneering new research centre, designed to revolutionise how crucial metals are extracted, used and reused in clean and digital technologies across the UK. 

The Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centre in Technology Metals is one of five new centres announced by the Government to explore how to create a circular economy for the technology metals, such as cobalt, rare earths and lithium, that are essential in all clean and digital technologies including electric cars and wind turbines. The centre aims to develop a new cycle, right from the first stages of extraction, to enable secure and environmentally-acceptable circulation of these crucial materials within the UK economy.

The project will be led by CSM's Professor Frances Wall, a regular at the Cornish Mining Sundowners, who presented a keynote lecture at MEI's Process Mineralogy '18 in Cape Town. Frances is a former Director of CSM and last year was the first ever female recipient of the Geological Society of London's William Smith Medal (posting of 8 March 2019).

Frances Wall (left) at Process Mineralogy '18 in Cape Town

The Centre will bring together experts from the Universities of Exeter, Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester and the British Geological Survey, as well as 40 partner companies and organisations. As well as researchers from the Camborne School of Mines, Exeter will also provide expertise from the Environment and Sustainability Institute, the Renewable Energy department and the Business School.

The Centre will apply circular economy principles to every aspect of mineral use in clean and digital technologies, including the initial extraction stage. The research will start with a case study of the industry ecosystem in Cornwall. With its exploration projects for the technology metals, lithium, tin and tungsten, the region has the opportunity to lead in whole systems circular economy actions for these metals. I am sure that we will hear a lot more about this at Sustainable Minerals '21 in June.

Finally a date to note for my diary- Good Friday April 2nd- as two days ago Boris Johnson said that he believed Easter would mark a "real chance to return to something like life as normal". Considering his previous promises and predictions, this is not the greatest of news.

@barrywills

IMPC Lifetime Achievement Award to Prof. James Finch

I was delighted to hear that my old friend Prof. Jim Finch, Emeritus Professor of McGill University, Canada is the 2020 recipient of the highest award of the International Mineral Processing Council, the Lifetime Achievement Award.

I interviewed Jim for MEI in 2015, and his long list of achievements up to the end of 2015 are documented there. Over a career of 50 years he has supervised 106 post-graduate students, of whom 50 were PhD students, and has published 375 papers in archival journals. Unlike many academic researchers his work has not just been laboratory based but has had a major impact on industrial practice through his very close association with industry throughout his career.

When I suggested to Elsevier that Jim would be the only person that I would like to have in charge of the 8th edition of Mineral Processing Technology, I never expected him to agree. But he accepted with enthusiasm, and maybe a little trepidation, and put together a strong team which has delivered what I consider to be a superb update of the text.

Book signing with Jim in Phoenix in 2016

Jim has had a long involvement with MEI, being our consultant to the flotation series of conferences, and at next year's Flotation '21 he will present a keynote lecture on the appreciation of the life and work of Prof. Graeme Jameson, of the University of Newcastle, Australia, also a holder of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Jim at Flotation '15 with fellow recipients of the SME's Antoine Gaudin Award,
Janusz Laskowski, Nag Nagaraj and Graeme Jameson
Janusz and Graeme are also Lifetime Achievement Award winners

Jim at Flotation '19 with Frank Cappuccitti and Jan Nesset

Prof. Finch has been a long-standing member of the IMPC Council (since 2000), a regular attendee at Congresses since the 1980s and was the Chair of the Organizing Committee for the XVIII IMPC in Quebec City in 2016, where he presented Prof. Graeme Jameson with his Lifetime Achievement Award.

Jim welcoming delegates to the Quebec IMPC in 2016

With Jim and Glen Dobby, his co-author for the seminal book Column Flotation

This year's award has gone to the most modest of men, who young students find very approachable and helpful, and it is a great pity that, due to the pandemic, we will have to wait until the XXXI IMPC Congress in Melbourne in August 2022 before the award will be presented in person and we will be able to share the evening with Jim and his wife Lois.

Barbara with Jim and Lois at Flotation '11 in Cape Town

@barrywills

Critical Metals and the UK's "Green Industrial Revolution"

2020 has been a momentous year in world history, and it is looking like 2030 is building up to be the start of a golden new decade, a new green era with the British landscape dotted with wind farms and electric vehicles moving silently and pollution free along our roads.

Only a few weeks ago PM Boris Johnson, no stranger to grand announcements, often preceding U-turns, promised to make Britain the "Saudi Arabia of wind", pledging that offshore wind will produce enough electricity to power every home by 2030 (posting of 12th October). This would need an offshore wind capacity of 40 gigawatts, compared with the current capacity of 10 gigawatts, and analysts have suggested that this target would require the completion of a turbine every weekday throughout the decade- a lot of steel, as well as other raw materials.

And last week another promise for 2030, a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, all part of Johnson's "green industrial revolution" to tackle climate change and create jobs in industries such as nuclear energy.

The plan has been welcomed by environmental groups, but how feasible is it, and how 'green' is it?

Way back in 2019 (it now seems a lifetime ago) I asked whether the UN Paris Agreement target of zero carbon emissions by 2050 was feasible, as this would put enormous demands on the world's finite resources of raw materials (posting of 21st July 2019). This situation has now been exacerbated by Covid, which has led to the closure of many of the world's mines. New developments have been inhibited by the low esteem in which the industry is currently being held, inhibiting capital investment, and the need to obtain social licenses to operate (Is mining facing its second existential crisis?).

Many metals and non-metals are essential in the manufacture of wind turbines and electric vehicles, and it must be remembered that huge amounts of energy are required just to mine and extract these materials. Some of the most important metals are classed as 'critical', mainly due to geopolitical reasons or shortage of supply and their production in many cases cannot be classed as 'green'.

The most important metal in wind turbines and electric vehicles is copper, which is at the heart of either producing electricity or providing motive power. A large turbine requires around 4.5 tonnes of copper, and electric vehicles up to 100 kg. Average mined copper grades fell from 1.31% in 2000 to 0.94% in 2018, raising operating costs and slowing the enthusiasm to develop new mines. This year work stoppages due to measures designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus have stalled existing capacity and have delayed investments with long-term repercussions for supply. Chile has been the worst affected followed by the U.S. and Peru.

At the heart of a wind turbine nacelle is the giant permanent magnet which is rotated by the turbine blades to generate electricity in the copper coil which surrounds it. The magnet relies on a critical rare earth element neodymium, which is alloyed with iron and boron to make very powerful permanent magnets, not only for wind turbines, but for high power, low weight electric motors for many applications.

Around 2.5 tonnes of neodymium are required in a wind turbine, but when we look up at one of these giant structures we need to ask "how green are they in reality"?

Neodymium and other rare earth elements are not actually rare at all. They occur in the earth's crust in much greater abundance than the so-called common metals such as copper, lead and zinc, but they are very thinly distributed among the crustal rocks, and only occur in economic deposits, mainly of the minerals bastnaesite and monazite, in certain parts of the earth. Unfortunately we are almost completely dependent on China for their supply, accounting for 90% of the world’s rare earths production. China also controls the refining and processing sectors and mining and extraction is highly energy intensive, using mainly fossil fuels, and is by no means environmentally friendly (posting of 11th February 2013).

Baotou, the largest industrial city in Inner Mongolia, is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of rare earth minerals and the by-product of extraction produces dangerous gases and radioactive wastewater, which are fed, according to BBC corespondent Tim Maughan, into a dystopian lake.

Toxic sludge pours into the lake, with the city of Baotou in the background
Image courtesy of Liam Young/Unknown Fields

Maughan reports "After seeing the impact of rare earth mining myself, it’s impossible to view the gadgets I use everyday in the same way. As I watched Apple announce their smart watch recently, a thought crossed my mind: once we made watches with minerals mined from the Earth and treated them like precious heirlooms; now we use even rarer minerals and we'll want to update them yearly. Technology companies continually urge us to upgrade; to buy the newest tablet or phone. But I cannot forget that it all begins in a place like Bautou, and a terrible toxic lake that stretches to the horizon".

The West is more dependent than ever on China for the importation of critical minerals and rare earth elements, and China has repeatedly threatened to stop exporting these minerals, so 'home-grown' supplies are going to be essential in future.

A promising development is Pensana Rare Earths Plc's Longonjo Project in Angola, now one of the world’s largest known rare earth resources.The company has initiated a study into the establishment of an integrated rare earth processing facility in the UK with a view to creating the world’s first sustainable magnet metal supply chain. The Longonjo project could, together with the UK processing facility, produce enough rare earth oxide to supply the wind turbines at Dogger Bank in UK, projected to be the world’s biggest wind farm, for the next 20 years. The project is being developed to international standards and has established infrastructure, including the capacity to be entirely powered by hydro-electricity, making Longonjo one of the world’s most sustainable rare earth producers.

Just as copper is at the heart of turbines and motors, so lithium is at the heart of the batteries which supply electricity to the motors.

Australia is the largest producer of lithium, mined from hard rock ores, but this is coming under increased scrutiny as the concentrates are processed in China using fossil fuels. Most of the remaining lithium supply is currently extracted from brines in Chile and Argentina, which involves evaporating the brine in vast evaporation ponds, with potential threats to the water supply. Chile’s Salar de Atacama is the world’s largest and purest active source of lithium, but uncertainty over the sustainability of mining activity has long cast a pall over the sensitive salt flat, home to one-quarter of the world’s current output of lithium, but also indigenous communities, protected areas, and endangered flamingos. The area is of huge importance in satisfying soaring global demand for the white metal, so again home grown supplies are vital if the green revolution is to take place at speed.

Brine pools and processing areas on the Atacama salt flat. Image courtesy of SQM

The UK has no lithium production at present but down here in Cornwall Cornish Lithium Ltd has found “globally significant” lithium grades in geothermal waters and is preparing to extract lithium in a zero-carbon operation (posting of 18th September). Geothermal waters which contain lithium are very different from other occurrences of lithium in brine, given that the same water can be used to generate zero-carbon electrical power and heat. As such these waters are rapidly becoming recognised as the ultimate ethical source of lithium, as Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technology will be used to extract dissolved lithium compounds from the water without the need for the large evaporation ponds that are used in the arid regions of South America. It uses ionic adsorbents and/or ion exchange membranes, with the residual water being returned to depth via a borehole.

Using DLE technology Cornish Lithium aims to maximise product recovery from the geothermal waters in a small footprint, energy efficient extraction plant, which will be powered by an on-site geothermal power plant. Lithium will be extracted from the water from the geothermal power plant's 5.2km deep borehole and the water will then be reinjected into the rock.

Geothermal brines are not the only source of lithium in Cornwall. British Lithium Ltd is the first company in the UK to explore for hard rock lithium and the only one so far to have established a resource, in the St Austell area, well known for its china clay deposits. It now aims to build a quarry and refinery in Cornwall that will produce 20,000 tonnes per year of lithium carbonate, from granitic lithium micas.

And finally, on the subject of lithium-ion batteries, their future success may depend on ditching a key ingredient, the heavy metal cobalt, which is used to increase the lifespan of the battery and produce a high energy density. Recent analyses show that there may be cobalt shortages if we don’t start refining and recycling it more efficiently or in greater quantities. Cobalt is often produced as a by-product of copper or nickel mining, but it is expensive and around 60%  of the world’s supply comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where responsible companies such as Glencore operate. The DRC is not the most stable of countries, however, and it is also the world's poorest, with many people, including young children, eking out a meagre existence by illegal and dangerous mining.

In summary I am not trying to paint a gloomy picture here, merely to highlight that an essential ingredient in the welcome green revolution always seems to be overlooked- mining and the supply of the vital raw materials- and the fact that fossil fuels cannot be phased out overnight- they will be needed for many decades to come in order to mine and refine the necessary materials, and to build the wind turbines and vehicles of the future.

It is essential that the internal combustion engine be replaced by electrification, as it is one of the world's biggest killers, due to the choking air pollution that it produces. But we must be realistic in how soon we can achieve the green revolution objectives, and 2030 seems very optimistic. 

In his announcement, Boris Johnson indicated that the revolution would create jobs in various industries, including the building of new nuclear power stations. These will all be fission reactors, of course, and although they produce relatively clean energy with minimal carbon emissions, any accidents that occur can be catastrophic, as witnessed at Chernobyl and Fukushima, and there is, of course, the problem of disposal of the nuclear waste.

Only last year, Johnson waxed lyrical about the future of nuclear fusion (posting of 30th October 2019), but there was no mention of this in his announcement. Politicians, unfortunately, seem to have very short memories and many do not grasp the basic concepts of science and engineering. A great deal of international collaborative work is being done to develop viable fusion reactors and once the immense engineering challenges have been overcome, it may be that in the not too distant future this abundant source of limitless clean energy may have made the many wind turbines which will dot our countryside and coastal waters obsolete. The run up to 2050 is going to be very interesting! A shame that I won't be around to report on it.

@barrywills