Grant: CCI Applied Research and Development Grants

The Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy presented in 2022 shows lithium as one six mineral elements representing the greatest opportunity to fuel Canadian domestic manufacturing. Across the country, lithium projects are emerging from different sources: brines, spodumene, clays, and are subjected to exploration phase and extraction cost analysis. Frontier Lithium is, at the moment of this project, a pre-production lithium chemicals company that is in the process of developing the PAK Lithium Project with a hard rock lithium mine site located north of Red Lake, ON and a lithium chemicals refinery in Thunder Bay, ON. The project is currently going through a feasibility study with an economic and environmental aspect in mind. Following this goal and the Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy second goal of environmental protection, a green chemistry - atom economy process using Bipolar electrodialysis (BPED) will be tested with Frontier Lithium sodium sulphate byproducts to recover sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxyde using electricity. On one side, the BPED will enhance competitivity by lowering raw chemicals supply, logistical needs to deliver those to the refinery while lowering GHG production of the supply chain (if low GHG energy source for electricity is used). This project is upstream of Frontier Lithium's project to construct a Lithium Demonstration and Innovation Center (LDIC) that will involve a demonstration scale pilot plant for longer term operation of the lithium chemicals process.