GREEN MINING OF THE FUTURE B R I T I S H L I T H I U M I S T H E F I R S T CO M PA N Y TO D I S CO V E R A S I Z A B L E L I T H I U M D E P O S I T I N T H E U K , T H E F I R S T TO D E V E L O P A N O V E L P R O C E S S F O R E X T R AC T I N G L I T H I U M I N A S U S TA I N A B L E M A N N E R A N D T H E F I R S T TO P R O V E B AT T E RY G R A D E L I T H I U M C A N B E P R O D U C E D F R O M CO R N I S H G R A N I T E .
ased in Roche, the business has identified a resource of over 100 million tonnes in a former clay mine near St Austell - enough to support a projected annual production of 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate. That’s enough to meet one-third of Britain’s likely demand by 2030 when all UK car manufacture converts to electric vehicles. From the very start, British Lithium’s aim has been to achieve the lowest environmental footprint possible. Car electrification is based on the need for a greener future, yet most lithium production is currently powered by coal in China. “That’s why we have developed a highly efficient process for concentrating lithium mica without using chemicals and why we will be using renewable energy to power our newly invented Mi-Sep ® technology which has a patent pending,” said CEO Andrew Smith. British Lithium carried out a scoping study in 2018 to
10 | FIND THE BALANCE
target areas for lithium, which is only found in the brown mica of granite. The work involved field mapping, grab sampling, trenching and drilling to provide a better understanding of lithium mineralisation and grade variability within the deposit. Mineral processing starts with breaking the rock to a size where the minerals can be separated from one another and extracting lithium from the waste. British Lithium’s method focuses on minimising chemical use so the waste coming from its plant will not need neutralising. Water composition is essentially unchanged and, because the team will be extracting micas at a really coarse size, the waste material is very similar to building or beach sand. “Once we have made a lithium mica concentrate, we roast it using lime as a reagent, rather than acid,” said Andrew Smith. “The solution is then purified to produce lithium carbonate.”
