M.Plan International is hosting a webinar series highlighting the implications of specialty projects. The third webinar in this series devoted to the topic “Lithium Spotlight – Market Outlook, Mineralogy and Processes” took place November 18th and 19th, 2020.
M.Plan International managing director Mr. David Anonychuk started the session by giving an introduction to his company as well as its shareholding companies Micon International and ANZAPLAN (co-presenting) and their involvement and expertise in the specialty mineral and metal projects.
Mr. Anonychuk focused on outlining the future growth of the automotive sector and how this in turn will drive investment in project development of the required specialty minerals and metals, namely lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and vanadium.
Following this introduction to the topic Dr. Sebastian Prinz (Director Business Development, ANZAPLAN) discussed the structure of the most common lithium pay minerals (spodumene, petalite, lepidolite, zinnwaldite, hectorite) and the different geological settings in which they form, such as hard rock (LCT, greisen related) and sedimentary (clay and tuff) deposits.
Dr. Christian Graf (Process Division Director, ANZAPLAN) then provided concrete examples on how to extract lithium from the different lithium pay minerals both from hard rock and clay deposits. He discussed the different processing routes used to achieve lithium battery grade chemicals including the indirect route from lithium carbonate to lithium hydroxide and the direct route to lithium hydroxide stressing the importance of understanding and addressing specific mineral impurities to achieve optimum processing results.
The webinar was finally rounded off by a Q&A Session in which questions from the audience were discussed.