A Closer Look at Avalon Advanced Materials' Recent PEA Assessment

On September 27, Avalon Advanced Materials (TSX:AVL) announced the completion of a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) on its 100 percent owned Separation Rapids Lithium project, noting that its purpose was to find the potential for recovery of a lithium product suitable for the battery market.

Don Bubar, president and CEO of Avalon, said that over the course of a year, the company had been able to develop a new process flowsheet to extract a lithium hydroxide product from the rare high purity lithium mineral petalite–something he noted had not been done before.

The Investing News Network (INN) had the chance to speak with Bubar about results and, in particular, discussed the following:

• How Avalon developed the process flowsheet to extract a lithium hydroxide product
• How the results put Avalon in the forefront for lithium products suitable for the battery market
• What the company is doing to support the completion of a feasibility study in 2017
• If commercial operations are attainable by 2020

Below is a transcript of our interview. It has been edited for clarity and brevity. Read on to see what Bubar had to say.

INN: Can you describe the process Avalon took to develop the process flowsheet to extract a lithium hydroxide product from the rare high purity lithium mineral petalite, which you said had not been done before?
DB: Sure. First of all, Separation Rapids is a large deposit of a rare lithium mineral called petalite used historically to make thermal shock resistant glass-ceramics. When we first discovered it in the late 1900’s we only looked at developing it for this industrial mineral application. It was just last year that we began to look at producing a lithium battery material from the deposit. We had to start from scratch with this mineral petalite because, to our knowledge, no one had previously tried to process it to make a lithium compound for battery applications.
The process testwork involved various hydrometallurgical processes that dissolve the mineral, get all of its constituent elements into solution, and then precipitate out a lithium chemical compound – in this case lithium hydroxide.
There are a number of different ways you can do that and some ways are better suited for certain minerals than others. Of course, we were looking for the most efficient process for petalite, in terms of lowest cost and minimizing waste, and we think we found it.
INN:  With the battery market being such a high demand market, how do these PEA results put Avalon in the forefront?
DB: Certainly the process flowsheet makes us very competitive in terms of average production cost, but it’s still pretty early. Our recent PEA demonstrates positive economics, but there’s still work to do to optimize the flowsheet and reduce costs further.
Secondly, because the Project has had a lot of work done on it historically – the deposit was drilled and the resource first defined in the 1990’s – this means Avalon has a relatively short timeline to potentially get the project to commercial operation, maybe in as little as four years if there are no permitting delays. These days that is a “fast track” in the mineral development industry.
INN: Regarding the next steps you will take, what will the company be doing to support the completion of a feasibility study in 2017 and secure customer acceptance of the products?
DB: The next step is to look into expanding the lithium resource at Separation Rapids. Avalon spent the last year just on process flowsheet development because we already had a lithium resource of significant size defined. So, unlike early exploration companies, Avalon has been able to focus on confirming that our resource is indeed amenable to recovery of a lithium compound that would meet the requirements of the battery industry.
Now that we’ve done that, the next step is to do more drilling on the resource to get a better feel for ultimately how big the resource could be, so that we can scale the operation appropriately and optimize the mine plan. We plan to proceed with a drilling program this winter.
In parallel with that, Avalon will continue to optimize the process flowsheets, and do more testwork to produce more product samples for customer evaluation and acceptance. When we processed the bulk sample last winter we produced about a tonne of petalite concentrate, so we have lots of material to work with for further hydrometallurgical process testwork and to make more product samples.
We will also be looking at the recovery of other potential by-products in the ore. Feldspar is one by-product that we can already show there is a market for, so we could include it in the PEA economics.
INN: That sounds very exciting.
DB: Yes, I think it’s all doable. We’ve had several expressions of interest in the lithium product already from consumers in the battery sector, so it’s all pretty encouraging.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Jocelyn Aspa, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Editorial Disclosure: Avalon Advanced Materials is a client of the Investing News Network. This article is not paid for content.
The Investing News Network does not guarantee the accuracy or thoroughness of the information reported in the interviews it conducts. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not reflect the opinions of the Investing News Network and do not constitute investment advice. All readers are encouraged to perform their own due diligence.