eEnergy Group Regulatory News (EAAS)

18 April 2019

Alexander Mining plc

("Alexander" or the "Company")

Lithium Joint Venture Research and Development Final Results

Further to the announcement in December 2018 regarding the larger scale testwork on the lithium heap leaching joint venture ("R&D JV") with Alexander's Principal Technological Consultant, Dr. Nicholas Welham, the work has now been completed. The R&D JV was a one-off proof of concept initiative, completely focused on lithium and separate to Alexander's core AmmLeach® and HyperLeach® intellectual property.

Four samples of different lithium minerals, spodumene, petalite, lepidolite and zinnwaldite, were obtained from confidential industry sources. A series of preliminary test work runs were made which gave encouraging results for a small set of reagents. Further runs were then made from which the two most promising reagents were selected for a larger scale series of runs of longer duration.

The results from these runs showed that leaching of lithium from all four minerals was achieved at ambient temperature and pressure. However, the rates of dissolution of the lithium were lower than required for the targeted heap leach. Of the minerals tested, only zinnwaldite appears to have any promise for heap leaching using the envisaged process.

No further work is planned at this stage. However, the Company retains a keen interest in the lithium mining and processing sector given its importance to the revolution in electric vehicles and transportation currently well underway. 

With growing evidence regarding the operational and economic difficulties with brine type lithium extraction methods, such as increased capital intensiveness, extended time to production, production volume variances from evaporation rates, the processing of lithium from hard rock resources has become a point of focus. Accordingly, the use of heap leaching as a possible processing method for the low-cost extraction of lithium remains of interest to Alexander and it will continue to seek opportunities to use its expertise in this area.

ENDS

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