Quebec lithium project enters final few months of start-up
by Cleantech Canada Staff
Nemaska Lithium plans to begin shipping samples to customers early next year as it scales-up mining and processing operations
Nemaska’s Shawinigan, Que. site where it will process mined lithium concentrate into battery-grade lithium hydroxide. PHOTO: Nemaska
QUEBEC CITY—Canadian miner Nemaska Lithium Inc. has entered the final few months of preparation and construction on its lithium mine and demonstration-scale processing facility in Quebec.
The company said both projects remain on-time and on-budget and it expects to begin shipping samples of processed lithium hydroxide to customers in the first and second quarters of next year.
“I am very pleased with the work that is happening at both sites,” Guy Bourassa, the company’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “We are working to tight timelines and budgets and the team has risen to the challenge and is consistently delivering results.”
Nemaska is currently making a number of final modifications to its small-scale Phase 1 plant in Shawinigan, Que. as it prepares to receive and install plant equipment. The company said the electrolysis cells used in the production process are slated to arrive later this month and commissioned before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, construction at the company’s mine site—about 300 kilometres from Chibougamau in central Quebec—has begun in earnest. Nemaska is building a year-round commercial access road, excavating and clear-cutting the area and preparing to mine a bulk sample. An on-site modular mill will produce a six per cent Li2O DMS (dense medium separation) concentrate, which will then be shipped to the Shawinigan plant for processing into battery-grade lithium hydroxide.
Making progress at both sites, the company plans to ship samples from the demonstration plant to customers early next year, as well as scale-up by constructing a commercial hydromet plant and mine.
