Global Appoints Key Processing Consultants
Sydney, Sep 15, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Global Geoscience Ltd (
ASX:GSC) ("Global" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of consulting engineers, Mr Silvio Bertolli and Mr Peter Ehren, to manage a program of processing and metallurgical test work and evaluation for the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project in Nevada, USA.
Highlights
- Appointment of highly experienced consulting engineers to manage processing and metallurgical test work and modeling
- Modeling and test work underway
Mr Bertolli and Mr Ehren are globally recognized experts in the lithium mining industry. Their complimentary skills will prove instrumental to the rapid advancement of the Rhyolite Ridge Project. Mr Bertolli is a chemical engineer with over 40 years of experience in process design and technology development in the chemicals and metallurgical industries for rare and base metals with emphasis during the last decade on lithium clay deposits. Mr Ehren is a consulting mineral processing engineer with global experience in lithium, boron and potassium deposits.
Global's Managing Director, Bernard Rowe commented: "As Global Geoscience enters the next phase of development at its lithium project in Nevada, Silvio and Peter will work as a team in their respective fields of expertise to rapidly advance our project towards planned large scale production of battery grade lithium."
Background on Mr Silvio Bertolli and Mr Peter Ehren
During the last eight years Silvio has successfully developed processes to extract lithium from clays, including pilot plant design and operation, engineering studies, cost estimating and economic analyses at the Kings Valley lithium-clay deposit in Nevada. He has extensive contacts and relationships within the lithium industry.
In addition, Silvio has held various technical and executive positions at U.S. and international companies and major EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contractors, such as the ENI Group of Companies, Agip SpA, Snamprogetti, Westinghouse Electrical, CF Chemicals and Washington Group International. His experience includes engineering design, R&D and operations, project development, economic analysis and technology development.
Peter has extensive experience in process development and optimization for lithium, boron and potassium. Peter has worked on numerous lithium projects around the world including major producing assets such as SQM's Salar de Atacama project in Chile and Orocobre's (ASX:ORE) (TSE:ORL) Olaroz project in Argentina where he designed and developed the process in use at the mine. Peter's brine expertise will prove very valuable in the backend processing where lithium, boron and potassium will be extracted from the solution (brine) produced from leaching of the mineralized clays.
Metallurgical Test Work
During the next three months the company will advance its process development in order to identify and define:
- Metallurgical mapping of the deposit
- Optimum upgrading conditions for lithium and boron
- Best leaching conditions aimed at minimizing reagent and energy consumption
- Processing steps required to separate lithium, boron and potassium and achieve commercial products
Silvio and Peter will commence with a review of recently acquired metallurgy data from Rhyolite Ridge and design the future program to advance the project in a timely manner. The work will include confirmation of the ore upgrading conditions with filtration/settling tests of the concentrate, an optimization of the calcite removal step and a comprehensive acid leaching program (without calcining/roasting) targeted at minimizing reagent consumption. The results will be used as inputs to a cost and economic model to evaluate project sensitivities.
Work Program In Progress
- Evaluation of the North Basin using historic and recently collected data (Sept 2016)
- Maiden JORC-compliant Resource estimate at South Basin (Oct 2016)
- Drilling of high-grade targets at North and South Basins (Dec Qtr)
- Preliminary process and metallurgical test work and economic modelling (Dec Qtr).
Global Geoscience is developing the Rhyolite Ridge, Nevada lithium-boron deposit into potentially one of the world's largest strategic, scalable and reliable sources of high quality lithium carbonate. The Company is positioning itself as a major U.S.-based supplier to support the rising global demand for lithium carbonate that is expected from the increased use of mobile electronics and hybrid/electric vehicles.
About Global Geoscience Limited
Global Geoscience Limited (ASX:GSC) is a Sydney-based mineral exploration company specialising in greenfield exploration and mineral discovery. The Company's main focus is for copper, gold and silver on its mostly 100%-owned projects in Nevada and Arizona in the United States, and Peru in South America.
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