American Lithium achieves higher-than-expected recovery rates at pilot plant in Peru
American Lithium Corporation has fully commissioned and started operating its Falchani lithium pilot plant, in Peru, with the operating systems performing as expected.
The pilot plant is being advanced by consultancy TECMMINE, in Lima, which is helping to derisk the Falchani project by validating the flowsheet at scale.
The plant is achieving average lithium extraction rates of 88.7%, which is well above the 80% recovery rate expected in a 2024 preliminary economic assessment.
With all flow sheet equipment now installed and testing, American Lithium is advancing toward full end-to-end flowsheet validation – at scale in a continuous mode, to validate the bench-scale results.
The pilot plant is expected to run continuously at target rates for three months to process between six and ten tonnes of ore from Falchani.
The pilot plant results will ultimately feed into future feasibility work on the project.
Falchani’s volcanic-hosted lithium mineralisation has naturally low impurities, supporting a simple flowsheet capable of producing battery-grade lithium carbonate exceeding 99.5% purity.
“The results from the key core processing stages have been very encouraging. The consistency we are seeing gives us strong confidence as we move rapidly toward full pilot plant operations. Every stage we bring online has added to our understanding of how this deposit will perform at scale, optimising to build on the promising recent results,” says American Lithium COO and president Laurence Stefan.