California-based 5E Advanced Materials (ASX:5EA) has identified areas where it can reduce costs as it ramps up boric acid production.
The company, which has a market capitalisation of just shy of $95 million, is progressing the ramp up to steady state production at its 5E Boron Americas Complex.
5E has identified an opportunity to reduce the wellfield sustaining capital expenditure as well as determined that higher mining temperatures provides an opportunity to optimise operating costs.
The current technical report envisages a mine plan with 841 vertical wells, but initial recovery data and mine planning indicates that by using horizontal wells, 5E can increase solution flow rates, resource contact, and reduce the quantity of wells by a factor of up to 10, which could meaningfully reduce capital expenditure.
Additionally, 5E has increased the head grade to between 5.5% and 6%, with an average of 9,822 parts per million boron, by heating the mining solution entering the deposit to a higher temperature of 60 degrees celsius.
The technical report assumes a head grade of 7% and the company says it remains on track to achieve this level or better.
A higher head grade reduces energy consumption, which in turn lowers the operating costs. 5E is investigating increasing the temperature further to realise even more cost savings.
Byproducts including calcium, chloride and magnesium hydroxide are also being assessed in addition to the lithium stream.
Magnesium in particular is classified as a critical mineral in the US and production of magnesium hydroxide is expected to be value accretive and further reduce operating costs.
5E has reached production of over one tonne of boric acid per day and is now aiming for 2.7 tonnes per day.
At the end of June, 5E commenced its customer qualification program after producing commercial grade boric acid.
To clear customer qualification, boric acid requires little to no moisture and impurities, as well as a specific particle size.
Once initial production was achieved, 5E spent the next two months refining the process to meet customer specifications.
CEO Paul Weibel says the team is now determined to achieve steady state operations, scale, and build inventory for the next phase of the customer qualification program, while producing quality product at planned rates.
The next phase of customer qualification will require up to around 91 tonnes of boric acid for testing in a live manufacturing environment.
Boric acid is widely used in manufacturing as detergents, water softeners and weak antiseptics, as well as to make fertilisers and pesticides. But boron also has several future-facing applications including for use in wind turbines, solar panels, permanent magnets and electric vehicle batteries.
The US has classified boron as a critical mineral. The 5E Boron Americas Complex previously received US Government Critical Infrastructure designation.
The designation is assigned to projects that are considered so vital to the US that delays or roadblocks to their development would impact security, national economic security, national public health or safety.
5E says its operation is the largest known new conventional (colemanite) boron deposit globally outside of Türkiye.
The company is undertaking a three-phase commercial production approach with the operation targeting 450,000 tonnes of boric acid and over 5,000 tonnes of lithium each year.
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: 5E Advanced Materials
