How Nature Cuts Recovery Costs

The process American Lithium Minerals, Inc. will use to obtain lithium carbonate from brine is so cost effective that hard-rock production is not longer economically viable.

Lithium brines are currently the only U.S. lithium source that can support mining without significant add-on profit from trace minerals such as tantalum, niobium, tin etc., (low manganese content within Nevada’s Montezuma Valley brines significantly reduces recovery costs, unlike Chile’s high manganese content brine deposits).

Nevada brines are pumped from the ground and progressed through a series of evaporation ponds. Over the course of 12 to 18 months, concentration of the brine increases to 6,000 parts per million (ppm) lithium through solar evaporation. When the lithium chloride reaches optimum concentration, the liquid is pumped to a recovery plant and treated with soda ash, precipitating lithium carbonate. The carbonate is then removed through filtration, dried, and shipped.

The lowest cost lithium producers will be tomorrow’s major lithium producers. US based lithium producers and US based lithium product manufacturers will have a huge advantage over their competition in other countries because of Obama’s Clean Green Energy Revolution.

The stimulus package and the desire to have independence from foreign supplied energy makes development of the Montezuma Valley lithium deposits a foregone conclusion.