お知らせ • Jun 22
American Battery Technology Company Announces Results of Its Lithium-Bearing Tonopah Flats Exploration Drilling Phase 1 Program
American Battery Technology Company announced positive drill results from its initial exploratory subsurface drill program, Phase 1, at its Tonopah Flats Lithium Project in Big Smoky Valley, Nev. This initial exploratory drilling program consisted of 16 targeted drill holes on ABTC’s 10,340 acres of lithium-bearing claims, and was guided by surface sampling results collected in early 2022. ABTC drilled approximately 7,895-feet in this Phase 1 program and based on these results the company intends to further expand these exploration efforts to continue to advance this project. ABTC has developed its own proprietary processing train for extracting lithium from this type of unique Nevada-based lithium-bearing sedimentary claystone resource and for the subsequent manufacturing of this extracted lithium to battery grade lithium hydroxide for sale to the domestic battery supply chain. Whereas many proposed extraction processes are only able to produce economically competitive lithium products from high lithium grade material, the low-cost and low-environmental impact manufacturing process that ABTC has developed is able to produce battery grade lithium hydroxide from a wide variety of lithium concentrations hosted within these sedimentary resources. ABTC, in collaboration with DuPont, was recently awarded a $4.5 million grant from the US Department of Energy to build and operate a multi-ton per day demonstration-scale system to accelerate the commercialization and scale-up of this critical lithium manufacturing technology. Highlights from this Phase 1 drilling program include: Shallow Overburden: Anomalous lithium concentrations were measured at very shallow depths, less than 50 ft below the surface in many cases, indicating that low-cost and low-strip ratio techniques can likely be applied to access these near-surface lithium-bearing sedimentary materials, Consistent Lithium Concentrations: Lithium concentrations above the reference cutoff concentration of 300 ppmw were observed in every drill hole, in consistent concentrations throughout a large percentage of the total sampled depths, and with significantly higher peak concentrations observed in many sample holes, which makes this deposit especially attractive to the internally-developed ABTC processing train, Depth of Mineralization: The drilling infrastructure employed in these explorations was able to drill to a depth of approximately 500-ft, and in several of these drill holes the significant mineralization of lithium is still present at these depths, indicating that the anomalous lithium presence could extend even beyond the sampled depths, Breadth of Exploration: With these initial 16 drill holes a wide breadth of ABTC claims have been explored, and when considering a 0.5-mile radius area of influence (AoI) around each drill hole, approximately 4,990 acres out of 10.320 acres of total claim area has been explored within this Phase 1 program, Magnitude of Deposit: With the anomalous lithium concentrations observed throughout the detailed exploratory drill holes, and throughout the listed sampling depths, the ABTC team is excited to accelerate the further exploration and characterization of these claims to advance this deposit to an inferred, indicated, and measured resource through the established S-K 1300 guidelines, Next Steps: ABTC will utilize the results from this Phase 1 program to develop a step-out drill program, Phase 2, to further characterize the deposit. Additional drill results on Phase 2 will aid in the determination of area-wide grade and thickness assessment of the in-situ amount of lithium in order to progress this deposit to a quantified resource. The ABTC Tonopah Flats Lithium Exploration Project encompasses 517 unpatented lode claims covering approximately 10,340 acres. As part of the company’s battery metals resource development exploration efforts, ABTC is performing bench scale characterization and extraction trials to confirm the technical and economic competitiveness of extracting elemental lithium from these domestic sedimentary resources in order to produce battery grade lithium hydroxide for sale to the battery metals market. Drilling was conducted by Harris Exploration Drilling and Associates Inc., of Fallon, Nevada, utilizing Schramm reverse circulation equipment with a 5.5” diameter hole with face centered bit, and by Drillrite LLC, Spring Creek, Nevada, using an Australian Air-Core Bit. Sampling was conducted using a cyclone splitter over 5-foot intervals. Sample custody was maintained by the company’s consultants throughout the sampling and logging process. The company has a rigorous QA/QC program utilizing blanks, duplicates, and a high and a low-grade lithium standard material. Duplicates and standard material are inserted into the sample stream, and blank material was inserted at the start and finish of drill hole sample set. Samples were analyzed by American Assay Laboratories in Reno, Nevada and Paragon Geochemical in Sparks, Nevada for analysis utilizing the ICP-MS analysis protocol.