Cypress Development completes assembly of pilot plant at Clayton Valley

Cypress Development Corp said it has finished the assembly of the pilot plant at the company’s Clayton Valley lithium project in Nevada.

The new pilot plant is located inside a metallurgical facility approximately 100 miles south of the project. Cypress began purchasing items for the pilot plant in March and work progressed through the summer. 

Having completed the assembly and operational testing of component equipment, the company plans to commence test extraction of lithium from sample material next week.

READ: Cypress Development acquires two dozen strategic mining claims in Nevada

As previously described, Cypress Development’s pilot plant will utilize chloride-based leaching combined with the Chemionex—Lionex process for direct lithium extraction (DLE).  

“The completion of the pilot plant represents a significant milestone and marks the culmination of months of work by Cypress, our consultants, and contractors,” Bill Willoughby, president and CEO of Cypress said in a statement.

He added: “This work, under the direction of Continental Metallurgical Services and supported by the management and personnel of del Sol Refining, Inc, has resulted in a pilot plant that embodies the research that went into our process flowsheet.”

The decision to use chloride-based leaching to extract the lithium from claystone was based on results from an internal scoping study completed in January. The study indicated the additional benefits in the areas of economics, process, and the environment when using a chloride-based rather than a sulphate-based leaching process.

However, the sulphate-based process remains a viable alternative as detailed in the project’s pre-feasibility study, which was amended in March of this year, the company noted.

“The testing ahead will be one of the larger piloting efforts to extract lithium from clay in the world, and the only one based on a chloride approach to leaching,” said Willoughby. “While the ultimate goal is to demonstrate the production of lithium hydroxide from our claystone resource on a larger scale, the results from the various areas within the plant, from leaching and tailings handling to solution treatment and recycling, chemical usage and water balance, will provide the data necessary to carry the project forward to the feasibility level.”

According to the company, there are four main sections in the pilot plant: leaching, tailings handling, pregnant leach solution (PLS) treatment, and the Chemionex—Lionex DLE process area. 

There are also two additional processing steps that will be conducted off-site at NORAM Engineering and Construction, Ltd’s BC Research Laboratory in Richmond; these steps will take the concentrated lithium solution and a portion of the depleted solution to produce lithium hydroxide. 

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