Recharge Resources receives Pocitos resource estimate draft, Argentina
Recharge Resources Ltd. [CSE-RR; OTC-RECHF; FSE-SL50] provided the following update on the company’s Pocitos 1 lithium brine project, located near Pocitos township in Salta province, Argentina.
WSP Australia Pty Ltd. has provided a first draft to the company of the inaugural NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimate (MRE) and is currently running an additional block model to support the final report.
The report includes some of the cost estimates from Ekosolve Ltd. for a 20,000-tonne lithium carbonate plant that is inclusive of an HCl (hydrochloric) acid plant and a lithium carbonate plant. The final report is anticipated to be filed in short order. WSP will utilize information gathered from the NI 43-101 technical report dated June 30, 2023, completed by Panopus Pte. Ltd. and the May, 2023, MT (magnetotelluric) survey, 2018 TEM (transient electromagnetic) survey, drilling programs, core logs and core porosity data to prepare the resource estimate.
This is another milestone in the company’s endeavour to build up to a 20,000-tonne Ekosolve direct lithium extraction (DLE) plant at the Pocitos project in order to supply Richlink Capital Pty. Ltd. up to 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate per year, as previously announced under a letter of intent of offtake.
David Greenway, president and CEO, commented: “I am delighted the WSP project engineers are building a resource model for the NI 43-101 update resource estimate and appreciate their diligence in this report. The company is pushing forward on all fronts with our inaugural NI 43-101, with MT geophysics survey and porosity studies completed and a pending drill program to continue to build on this highly anticipated report. These developments should make for an exciting next period for Recharge and its stakeholders at the Pocitos project.”
2018 and 2022 drilling: Recharge completed drilling the third hole at the Pocitos 1 lithium brine project achieving a 169-part-per-million-lithium assay and is currently awaiting permits for its coming three-well 2023 drill program.
As reported January 31, 2023, 200 litres of brine were collected to be sent to the University of Melbourne for testing to ascertain the recovery that was 94.9% using the EkoSolve processing system and 99.89% purity of the lithium carbonate. These brines were specially prepared for transit to Australia to maintain their content integrity.
The Pocitos 1 project is located approximately 10 km from the township of Pocitos, where there is gas, electricity and accommodation. Pocitos 1 is approximately 800 hectares and is accessible by road. Collective exploration totals over US$2-million developing the project, including surface sampling, trenching, TEM and MT geophysics, and drilling three wells that had outstanding brine flow results. Locations for immediate follow-up drilling have already been designed and identified for coming exploration.
Lithium values of 169 parts per million from drill hole 3 packer test assayed from laboratory analysis conducted by Alex Stewart were recorded during the project’s December 2022, drill campaigns. A double-packer sampling system in HQ diamond drill holes was drilled to a depth of up to 409 metres. The flow of brine was observed to continue for more than five hours. All holes had exceptional brine flow rates. An NI 43-101 report has been released on the Pocitos 1 project.
Recharge is awaiting the completion of the process engineering work to be completed by Ekosolve to produce and assay the lithium carbonate being produced, where extraction was above 94 per cent of the contained lithium in the brine (158.86 parts per million of lithium would have been recovered from 169 parts per million).
WSP is waiting on the relogging of the cores to be completed before it delivers the company’s maiden resource estimate at Pocitos 1, which will result in an update of the NI 43-101 report completed by qualified person Phillip Thomas in June 2023.