Century Lithium Corp. (TSXV: LCE |OTCQX: CYDVF | Frankfurt: C1Z) has obtained a provisional patent with the US Patent and Trademark Office, Department of Commerce, titled System and Method for Extracting Lithium from Clay and Other Materials in a Chloride Solution Using Individualized Pretreatments.
The patent pending process encompasses the company’s flowsheet, as developed at its lithium extraction facility in Amargosa Valley, Nevada, US, and protects the company’s intellectual property (IP) pertaining to the handling of solutions derived from the treatment of solid materials including clays from the company’s Clayton Valley Lithium Project, Nevada.
Bill Willoughby, president, and CEO, said, “Through the excellent work of Century Lithium’s team, we have developed a system for lithium extraction which is proprietary to the company. Our system incorporates innovations made during our team’s work at the pilot plant. The provisional patent provides protection of our system and its IP as we move forward with our feasibility study.”
Key steps of the provisional patent include:
- Conditioning solids prior to leaching; this step uses recycled process solution and sodium hydroxide, a by-product of the process, which acts as a dispersant and chemical reactant with clay-sized particles
- Leaching slurried pulp in a hydrochloric acid solution; this step includes capture of carbon dioxide which is used for the precipitation of calcium and magnesium later in the process
- Method of treating the post-leach slurry to remove iron and aluminum in a manner that allows pressure filtration of the solids and minimizes the use of flocculants and counter-current decantation
- Treatment of post-DLE spent solution to provide feed stock of sodium chloride solution to a chlor-alkali plant and recycle solution to the conditioning step
Additionally, the company’s patent pending system is based on the extraction of lithium from solids using both products of a chlor-alkali process, hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide. Under the provisional patent, Century Lithium’s protected IP includes the method of treating lithium-bearing solids with chloride solution and the handling of solutions, precipitates, and residues, exclusive of a lithium recovery stage (direct lithium extraction), a component process proprietary to Koch Technology Solutions.
To find out more, please visit www.centurylithium.com
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