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just had another 5 grands worth. More money put onto the Bushveld escalator.

In fact if ATM are targeting the ceramic industries then it is likely to be very low Iron content petalite, which will be priced at a premium to the standard battery level grade spods.

Investor81 - this could be similar to the well-known 'Erongo' situation on BMN - i.e. early stage local investors keen to take cash to buy BMW's (or similar)

I don't think that Iron is what you want in any lithium ore, but happy to be proved wrong. Having iron impurities in any material does not make it magnetic. eg stainless steel 316 which is non-magnetic (ferromagnetic) despite being composed of 75% iron - the magnetic separation stages already described in the processing plant are for separating the Cassiterite (Tin containing mineral) from the Tantalite (Tantalum containing ore).

As far as Lithium ores are concerned the best one is considered Spodumene (Li2O . Al2O3 . 4SiO2) because it can contain up to 8.0% Li2O by mass. Second best is the Petalite (Li2O. Al2O3. 8SiO2 - i.e. it has 4 more SiO2's bulking up the unit cell) which when 100% pure would contain 5.0% Li2O by mass. In this case the term 'best' is purely defined by how much Li2O you can transport per tonne of concentrated mineral concentrate.

It could well turn out that Petalite is easier to process or gives a better result because it has lower impurities, or that our Petalite is better than someone else's Petalite, again because of low impurities, or the right sort of impurities (ones that could easily be removed by processing) - so Spodumene is perhaps not the only game in town, despite it being the one that is almost exclusively referred to in standalone western australian hard-rock Lithium junior mining projects.

As an example of such a spod. project look at Galaxy resources who annually produce c. 150,000 tonnes of 'SC6' - Spodumene Concentrate 6% Li2O. It does not take too much working out to establish how much petalite ATM might be able to produce from its Phase 1 and Phase 2 operations.

Pdub - slide 25 is particularly interesting as it makes it clear that the increase in Vanadium production in China was not simply as a result of the bringing online of some stone coal production (due to the high V price) but also co-production from VTM sl-a-g processing arising due to the high price of Iron.

In the long-term china is moving away from making steel from their own magnetite (which contains the Vanadium) to haematite imported from Australia (which does not) - but the price spike in Iron, triggered by the Vale disaster, has meant that home-grown Chinese VTM production has come back on stream. Longer term though it will die back as it is a dirtier and more expensive process to run (it's not just Vanadium that is the 'dirt', but nasties such as Sulphur which cause smog in other parts of the country.)

So what we have seen in the last 2.5 years is a a number of short term effects coming together - new Rebar regs, traders speculation on the V price, the Vale disaster, short term restarting of dirty processing routes for V in china, which ultimately will not change the long term demand outlook for Vanadium.

They have no Vanadium of their own, they will not put tariffs on Vanadium imports.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/30/tories-urge-lifting-off-onshore-windfarm-ban

BS - it's a very small country really and we have a well established grid so it is not a strong requirement to site wind turbines in the south east - after all most of the coal fired power stations are in the midlands.

interesting but the usual demand for seasonal storage is to provide energy for heating in the winter in northern latitudes. This is when wind is actually at its strongest at those latitudes and is why wind is particularly useful for the UK, if only the tories would let us build turbines on land.

Bill could I ask why

Richken - good points - this takes us back to the excellent interview by Crux investor just 3 weeks ago:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3QUjIL1rJQ

Interestingly this has over 11,000 views, making it the most watched video there in the last 3 weeks.

Yep I had that David Attenborough in the back of me cab earlier today, very clever man, so I says to him he wants to be looking at a battery technology, but not them newfangled lithium wotsits that bloke Musk is always on about, nahhh I said you wants to look at some good old fashioned stuff like flow batteries. Been around for years they have, nearly as long as you mate I laughs. "Well no actually, they were around 40 years before I was born, they powered the world's first pilotable aircraft, La France in 1884". Well that's me well an truly told ain't it, but he isn't stopping there he's carrying on "... course that was a zinc-chloride flow battery, not as energy dense and reliable as the new Vanadium ones they've been making for the last 30 years". Well blow me if he didn't know abaht it all along ! Like I say a very clever man. Did I tell you I had that Michael Gove in the back of the cab the other, now he's a complete ...

I agree with you jimbo

thats a very good video Sharesahoy

Northern Monkey - I did not suggest that there was an external short sell but that the MMs had sold short - this is when they sell shares that they do not yet have on the assumption that they will be able to walk the price back down later and pick up the shares that they need. Thus no sell needs to appear now, or at any point in the future, should nobody decide to entertain the idea of giving away their shares at these prices. If the Market Makers cannot pick up the shares that they need in this way then they will have no option but to double down by moving the price up even higher, thereby lengthening their short position, but now with a higher overall average price on the shares they have sold to us. This, they hope, will make it easier for them to pick up the shares that they then need.

The simple fact that they have barely increased the ask despite there being about 5 million shares bought in the last 2 days makes me think that the MMs are going short and will hope that they can spook people by dropping the price in the next few days or weeks. As a result I am therefore holding off buying more until that point.

shhhh don't tell UK AIM investors that this isn't going to be trying to drill for oil or introduce yet another (yawn) disruptive advertising model to the under-5 age group, but instead going to be producing vital battery metals for the energy transition. 90% of them still think that incandescent lightbulbs are a good idea.

Zinc/Bromine - only one commercial manufacturer that I know of ( https://redflow.com/) - potentially produces toxic Bromine gas because Bromine has only limited solubility in water.

Zinc/Iron - only one commercial manufacturer that I know of, ViZn ( https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/distressed-vizn-seeks-lifeline-following-staff-layoffs ) - it was their battery that exploded at the John ****erill site in Liege. This uses highly alkali electrolyte which, as I have mentioned before, is considered more dangerous than strong acid because you don't feel it when you get it on you.

Iron/Chromium - the only commercial manufacturer that I know of (http://enervault.com/seeking-new-owners/) was trying to sell itself in 2015 - since then nothing.

Iron/Iron-Chlorine - the only commercial manufacturer that I know of is ESS (https://www.essinc.com/energy-storage-products/ ) - the problem with Iron only batteries is that there are only 3 oxidation states of iron and this seems to lead to a dilemna when it comes to deciding whether to have an acidic or alkali electrolytes - pH less than 3 leads to hydrogen evolution on the anode side whilst a pH higher than this causes hydrolysis on the cathode side.

... as a result complexing agents are often required - it may well be this that is in the Lockheed Martin flow battery design - again if it is then there will be only a single manufacturer of that type of flow battery.

MIT organic electrolytes - still in the lab, and still not lasting.

Which brings us to Vanadium flow batteries, which ARE here, ARE working, ARE commercially competitive and which have almost 20 manufacturers now building an industry that can contribute to dealing with the energy transition. (http://www.vanitec.org/vanadium-redox-flow-battery-vrfb-companies )

that' a UT trade

Yep that's quite a big buy there, reported after hours.

I wonder if this has got to do with the Mines and Money and Crux Investor interviews that are happening around now, and/or the Tin meeting next week.