Future Engineering

The site of the new lithium processing facility in Kwinana, WA. Image: Tianqi Lithium. By Cameron Drummond CHINESE lithium major Tianqi Lithium has received approval for its $400 million lithium processing plant in the Perth city of Kwinana. Subsidiary Tianqi Lithium Australia announced it had received final approval from its parent company’s board of directors to build the plant. The company anticipated the creation of 500 jobs during construction and more than 115 full time production jobs upon its expected completion in late 2018. The Kwinana plant would process spodumene concentrate from the Greenbushes lithium mine in WA’s South West region, producing 24,000 tonnes per annum of lithium hydroxide for use in lithium batteries. The mine is operated by Talison...

JOINT venture partners Continental Nickel (75 per cent) and IMX Resources (25 per cent) have announced the discovery of new nickel sulfide intersections at the promising Ntaka Hill project, which forms part of the larger Nachingwea nickel-copper JV in southern Tanzania. The initial round of drilling assays received from the Sleeping Giant Zone at Ntaka Hill returned 32.65m grading 1.04 per cent nickel and 0.22 per cent copper and 14m grading 1.45 per cent nickel and 0.25 per cent copper. Multiple zones of scattered nickel sulfide mineralisation assaying more than 0.5 per cent nickel were also intersected in the hanging wall to the Sleeping Giant Zone. IMX’s interest in Nachingwea is held through a direct 25 per cent interest in...

Sugarloaf project funded by CRC grant iTech Minerals (ASX:ITM) has received $1.1m in funding for the Sugarloaf battery anode material project in South Australia. Of the grant, 46% will come from CRC-Projects and 54% will be funded by iTech and partners on an equal contribution basis. The Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Projects Program supports industry-led collaborations between industry, researchers and the community. Initially, the grant will focus on the production of a high-grade graphite concentrate from Sugarloaf and then progress to purification and spheroidisation to produce uncoated purified spherical graphite. iTech is also working with The Sustainable Minerals Processing Group at The Future Industries Institute, University of South Australia...