Materials
Europe may soon have local zero carbon lithium source
Centrally located in the Germany’s Upper Rhine Valley, Vulcan Energy Resources’ (ASX:VUL | FWB: 6KO) geothermal project has just reached a major milestone in delivering net Zero Carbon Lithium™ to Europe.
The company has reported lithium recoveries from its geothermal brines of greater than 90%, demonstrating that the technology works in the Upper Rhine Valley.
Vulcan has Europe’s largest lithium resource, a central position close to the growing lithium-ion batteries (LIB) and electric vehicles (EV) markets in Germany, the lowest CO2 intensity and water usage of all lithium projects globally, and now, a lithium extraction process that’s been proven to work on its geothermal brine.
A huge market for LIBs, and battery-quality lithium is emerging in Europe as EVs are deployed on a massive scale in the 2020s and Germany is at its heart.
However, EVs and LIBs have a dirty little secret — their supply chains are notoriously carbon intensive.
Lithium is currently transported to Europe’s battery manufacturers and automakers from environmentally damaging hard-rock mining or salar type brines operations in Australia, China and the Americas. This generates significantly more CO2 emissions than the manufacture of traditional internal combustion engine vehicles.
Bench-scale test work at Vulcan’s project has demonstrated >90% lithium recoveries via Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) from its geothermal brines. Using real brine at ambient pressure from the Upper Rhine Valley, Vulcan produced lithium chloride (LiCl) concentrates using techniques similar to other commercial and near-commercial lithium brine projects.
Thus, proving up the commercially mature extraction technology’s effectiveness for Upper Rhine Valley geothermal brines, and significantly de-risking the project.
While Vulcan is the first to bring this technology to Europe, and Upper Rhine Valley brines specifically, lithium has been extracted using Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) at commercial scale for decades in Argentina.
DLE has been proven to operate economically by Livent at its Fénix Project in Argentina, but this is not widely known. Neither is the fact that DLE is a more preferred, even ethical, way to produce lithium from brines than from evaporation ponds which have negative impacts on water resources.
Furthermore, as environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors become increasingly important considerations for investors, multinational corporations are coming under pressure to improve their ESG credentials. This extends to automakers in Europe, including Volkswagen, Tesla, and BMW who will be feeling this pressure, not only from investors, but in meeting more stringent government legislation too. The result will be pressure on EV and LIB supply chains to clean up their act.
Zero Carbon Lithium
Vulcan’s world-first first Zero Carbon Lithium™ process extracts battery-grade lithium from geothermal brines, a process which also provides a renewable energy source to power the extraction process.
Via an advanced DLE process, paired with low-carbon power/heat from geothermal energy production, Vulcan will extract lithium from geothermal brines to produce premium, battery quality Zero Carbon Lithium™ hydroxide using readily available heat and power. This is a closed system where brine is reinjected into the reservoir with no evaporation losses:
Schematic of Zero Carbon Lithium Process – producing lithium and power from geothermal heat
This zero carbon, or CO2-neutral, development of Europe’s lithium deposits is crucial for a sustainable and strong European battery industry and will bring the EU significantly closer to meeting its 2030 climate goals.
The CO2 intensity of Vulcan’s project is in fact the lowest compared to any lithium project worldwide:
Li-ion battery supply chain
Zero carbon or not, Germany is missing an important piece of the LIB supply chain. While well advanced in the latter stages from cathode manufacture through to the EV market, the country lacks the ‘lithium deposit to concentrate’ and ‘lithium processing to battery chemical’ stages of the supply chain:
The Payne Institute for Public Policy
The European Union is working on building an environmentally sustainable European LIB supply chain ahead of the anticipated surge in demand for electric vehicles (EV).
Vulcan has partnered with EIT InnoEnergy, the innovation engine for sustainable energy across the European Union, which includes accelerating innovation and commercialisation along the entire battery value chain.
EIT InnoEnergy will assist Vulcan in obtaining and fast-tracking licences, developing relationships with lithium off-takers in Europe’s auto and battery industries, and securing project funding.
Europe has enough lithium — the Vulcan Project alone hosts a globally significant 13.95 Mt contained lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), Europe’s largest JORC lithium resource. Of this, 13.2 Mt LCE is in the JORC Inferred category on its 100%-owned Ortenau license.
The now demonstrated >90% lithium recovery rate is a major step in proving that VUL’s geothermal brines can be a major source of lithium hydroxide for Europe’s LIB production sector — all while emitting net zero carbon.
London-based Natural Resources Global Capital Partners Limited (NRG) has been appointed to provide strategic and financial advice in connection with the Vulcan Zero Carbon Lithium Project.
NRG is an independent advisory firm and merchant bank focused on the global metals and energy industries and is led by Julian Vickers, ex-Global Co-Head of Natural Resources Investment Banking for Barclays.
Vulcan is now working on further optimising the lithium extraction process, completing its pre-feasibility study (PFS) by year end with the DFS to follow, ahead of first commercial scale production targeted for 2023.
Finfeed.com: Meagan Evans
After completing the required heritage clearance survey, and securing a reverse circulation (RC) drill rig for its maiden drill programme at its Mt Maitland high-grade gold project in Western Australia, Red Mountain Mining Limited (ASX: RMX) is set to start drilling.
The drilling program is planned for 18 holes for approximately 1300 metres and is scheduled to commence in the first week of November.
Historical mining delivered an average production grade of 19 g/t gold and the company expects there could be early stage share price catalysts on the horizon should the program go well.
RMX’s project is in close proximity to the $1.1 billion Westgold Resources Fortunum Gold Mine and its Bluebird Gold Mine to the south. It is also near the $800.3M capped Sandfire’s Monty Gold Mine and its Degrussa Copper Gold Mine.
RMX acquired the Mt Maitland project, which lies within the prolific Murchison Goldfields in July this year and is encouraged by a significant gold nugget found while prospecting within the Mt Maitland tenure.
The nugget points to the potential high-grade nature of the mineralisation at the Mt Maitland Project.
The Mt Maitland Project came with multiple drill-ready targets and historic production which averaged 19g/t Au.
Outstanding results from historic exploration at Mt Maitland include:
- gold-in-soils: peak 2,724 ppb, anomalies over 13 kilometres of strike
- rock chips: up to 62g/t Au, 8.8% Cu and 290g/t Ag channel sampling: 2.50m @ 22.7 g/t Au and 0.75m @ 61.8 g/t Au
- Drill results include 13m @ 2.53 g/t from 9m, 2m @ 1.53 g/t from 13m
During the heritage survey, additional geological mapping was conducted which has assisted RMX to vector this maiden drill program.
Rare earth pick up
RMX is also in the throes of acquiring a new rare earths/nickel-cobalt project.
The company reached agreement with ARD Group (ARD), the vendors of the Mt Mansbridge heavy rare earths project, to favourably restructure the transaction that was voted down by shareholders in March 2020.
The Mt Mansbridge Project consists of three West Australian tenements containing targets prospective for HREE and nickel-cobalt.
Located in the Kimberly region of Western Australia, the project area is approximately 130 kilometres south-east of the township of Halls Creek and consists of three contiguous granted exploration licenses E80/5111, E80/5229 and E80/5413 which combined cover a total area of 280 square kilometres.
As indicated below, the tenements lie approximately 40 kilometres from Northern Minerals’ (ASX:NTU) flagship Browns Range project.
Shares in Northern Minerals have doubled in the last four months.
The project area has been subject to exploration activities since the 1970s, primarily for uranium, gold and diamonds which were all unsuccessful.
The presence of the REE mineral xenotime in the Killi Killi Prospect has been overlooked and RMX now see the opportunity to capitalise on this and determine whether there is an economically viable concentration of REEs.
As part of funding the exploration program at Mt Mansbridge, Red Mountain has received firm commitments to raise $360,000 (before costs) via a share placement to professional and sophisticated investors.
The Placement will be undertaken at 1.2 cents per share and is subject to shareholder approval.
The company is also encouraged by recent activity in the rare earths sector.
The $1.5 billion takeover bid for Lynas Corporation by Wesfarmers Limited (ASX: WES) and the recent speculation that China may restrict further material to the US has once again seen a surge in Rare Earth prices and renewed market interest and investor sentiment back to the sector.
With China currently responsible for more than 80% of global supply of rare earths, there are supply chain concerns as Beijing could use its dominant position as a rare earths exporter to the US as leverage in the trade dispute with the sector being the next front in the trade war.
This has resulted in a strong global interest in the identification and development of non-Chinese sources of rare earths to reduce the dependence on supply from China.
The future supply of heavy rare earths is critical in the development of high-tech applications and high-performance magnets used in electric vehicles and wind turbines.
The crackdown by Chinese authorities on the mining of ionic clay deposits in Southern China for environmental reasons, the lack of substitutes along with very few significant sources of heavy rare earths outside of China, has resulted in a favourable outlook for the commodities.
Other projects
Red Mountain has a number of other projects at various stages.
A preliminary groundwork exploration programme has been designed for prospective regions within the granted Koonenberry tenement EL8997, with land access agreements currently in the process of being finalised.
The Koonenberry Gold Project covers approximately 660 square kilometres, and is located in a geologic setting considered analogous to the prolific Victorian Goldfields located in south-eastern Australia.
The Koonenberry Gold Project adjoins Manhattan Corporation’s (ASX:MHC) Tibooburra Gold Project where Manhattan announced a new high-grade gold discovery in June.
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