Old article but interesting, processing SC6 into PLS and using the waste to backfill the mine(s), or use for roadfill.
All roads starting from Manono.
Wesfarmers and rivals charge down the road with lithium
Brad ThompsonReporter
Updated Jul 2, 2021 – 5.21pm,first published at 3.46pm
Australia’s emerging lithium hydroxide producers don’t just want people to drive electric cars, they want them to drive on roads made from the waste left behind during processing.
A big headache for the trio of
emerging lithium hydroxide processors in Western Australia is what to do with the huge volumes of tailings left behind.
Australia’s lithium hydroxide producers are looking at ways to repurpose the huge volumes of waste left behind in making the key battery material.
They are now working together on plans to reuse what could be well over 1 million tonnes-a-year of benign chemical waste material produced in meeting
growing global demand for the key battery ingredient.
Wesfarmers chief executive of chemicals, energy and fertilisers Ian Hansen said the producers believed a material known as delithiated beta spodumene could be repurposed instead of dumped.
“We are working with our fellow lithium hydroxide producers, and various other organisations, because we believe that this material can be used in roads and building products,” he said.
“Rather than have to move it somewhere, we can actually supplement the aggregates industry.”
Wesfarmers, which is investing $1.9 billion in development of its Mt Holland project in partnership with Chile’s Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile, plans to cart the waste from a processing plant at Kwinana, south of Perth, hundreds of kilometres back to the mine.
Maybe Wesfarmers should consider a PLS plant over at Mt Holland.
