Monday's Webinar (Feb 15) hosted by E3 Metals

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You can register for Monday's webinar on the EPG Home Page. Read this so you have a better idea of what Chris Doornbos, E3 Metals CEO will be presenting.

E3 Metals has one of the largest lithium resources amongst its lithium peers with 6.7 Million Tonnes (Mt) of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), hosted in the world class Leduc Reservoir in Southern Alberta. This covers only a third of the company’s permit area in south-central Alberta. The Leduc is well known for its ability to produce fluids and allows the company to continually expand its production into the future.

Lithium enriched brine occurs within the prolific Leduc Formation in Alberta as dissolved lithium ions in the formation water. Occurring about 2,500m below the surface, the Leduc Formation is an extensively dolomitized ancient reef complex that spans 100’s of square kilometres in area and over 200 metres thick.

It exhibits exceptional flow rates and deliverability due to favourable rock properties and pressure. The reservoir is extremely well understood due to 70 years of historical oil and gas development in the area.

Of the billions of litres of fluid contained within the pore space in the Leduc Formation, greater than 95% is Lithium enriched brine. The remaining ~5% is hydrocarbons which have been mostly depleted in the Leduc Reservoir.

Project Highlights

E3 Metals is developing a lithium brine project utilizing Direct Lithium Extraction processes. With simplified commercializing by building on the backbone of the oil and gas industry in Alberta, the company is working towards a pilot, planned for 2021. Once past this critical stage in the project development, E3 Metals will complete the construction decision of 20,000 t/year of lithium outlined in a Pre-Feasibility Report.

E3 Metals has one of the largest lithium resources amongst its lithium peers with 6.7 Million Tonnes* (Mt) of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), hosted in the world class Leduc Reservoir.

E3 Metals’ proprietary primary extraction process has an extremely high affinity for lithium over other elements in lithium brines. This allows E3 Metals’ direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology to quickly and efficiently remove lithium from brine, without the use of evaporation ponds, that produces a high grade, high purity lithium concentrate. This concentrate can be processed using conventional methods into high value lithium products.

Lithium-ion batteries are powering the electrical vehicle (EV) revolution, with manufacturers projected to bring over 300 million EVs to market by 2025. Analyst forecasts demonstrate lithium production must increase over 500% in the next decade to meet this explosive growth, and nations around the world have designated lithium a critical mineral, essential for their economies.

E3 Metals believes the key to project feasibility is the development of an efficient lithium extraction technology that can be deployed using a direct brine process. Direct brine processing produces a concentrate feedstock that could be turned into lithium hydroxide using conventional production equipment. The benefit of E3 Metals process is that it can achieve at least 20x to almost 100x concentration of lithium (up to 5300 mg/L) with reduction of over 99% of all impurities. This is achieved with average lithium recoveries over 90%.

The production of valuable lithium hydroxide from Alberta brine resources requires 3 main steps:

A. Brine Production and Injection: The Leduc Reservoir in Alberta can sustain very high flow rates within its confined aquifer allowing for large volumes of brine to be produced to surface. Once lithium is extracted, the brine can be re-injected back into the reservoir for disposal.

B. Lithium Extraction: E3’s proprietary Direct Lithium Extraction Process selectively extracts lithium from brine, concentrating it into a lithium rich solution while removing unwanted impurities and reducing fluid handling volumes for downstream processing.

C. Lithium Production: Using existing commercial technology, the lithium rich concentrate can be further purified to produce high-grade lithium products through electrolysis and crystallization.