Millennial Lithium Corporation
Pastos Grandes Project
Iain Colin Scarr
C.O.O. de Millennial Lithium Corp.
Proyecto Pastos Grandes S.A.
What is the current situation of the Pastos Grandes project?
Millennial Lithium’s flagship Pastos Grandes lithium brine project is in the feasibility and pilot stage. We anticipate finalizing the DFS (Definitive Feasibility Study) in May 2019, in preparation for financing this year, with construction to begin by early 2020 at the latest.
What is the investment for this project?
The overall investment will be greater than US$400 million.
How is the plant and what are its facilities?
Millennial is employing the well-understood “traditional” evaporative process, followed by well known purification methods. The overall process will ultimately involve 12-15 square kilometers of solar evaporation ponds to partially purify and concentrate the feed to a plant that will produce 25 thousand tonne per year of highly purified (>99.2%) “battery quality” lithium carbonate.
For your energy needs have you developed a renewable energy park? What does it consist of?
We are using a hybrid renewable energy park for our current development park energy requirements. Feeding our personnel camp, pilot plant and laboratory is a 540-panel PV field yielding 178,2 kWp, combined with a 475kWh (real) storage battery system yielding a nominal 235kWh storage. Back-up power is provided by two diesel generators. The microgrid system is managed by a central controller that optimizes power requirements and battery charging to minimize diesel fuel consumption. It is important to mention that the power generation from the pv park will avoid the emission of nearly 150 tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere per year. We aim to be the most sustainable lithium carbonate producer.
The production will be destined in its entirety to the export?
Millennial Lithium has not entered into any off-take commitments at this time, and is open to domestic and international sales.
Have there been policies and regulations at national and provincial levels that have facilitated the execution of the project? Would It be necessary Any other more?
Argentina’s national mining law is among the best in the world for promoting sustainable mining practices and operations, and no additional policies or regulations are required. A temporary mining export retention is in place at this time which could discourage new investment, but is scheduled to be lifted but the time new Argentine lithium producers are to be commissioned.
