POSCO is building a large demo plant in South America as a prelude to the world’s first lithium extraction technology it developed. POSCO held an event on 1 August at the Pohang Plant of POSCO PLANTEC to celebrate the transfer of a massive demo plant facility.
The facility, which features POSCO’s pioneering lithium extraction technology, will sail for 5 weeks to a port in Chile, after which it will travel by land for a week through the Andes, finally arriving at the Cauchari salt lake located in Jujuy, northwest Argentina. The plant facility will be built in the Cauchari, situated in 4,000m high hills. The mineral rights are owned by Lithium Americas Corp (LAC), a Canadian lithium and salt lake developer, and POSCO has reached an agreement with LAC to build its demo plant in the salt lake. According to this agreement, LAC will provide the rights to use the Cauchari brine, infrastructures and relevant licensing, while POSCO will build and operate independent facilities.
Once the massive 200-ton lithium carbonate demo plant is completed at the end of November, it will commence normal operation by the end of December, thereby rounding off the final-stage test of the direct lithium extraction technology.
