#Lithium's Top Challenge Is Finding Funds

Despite bullish forecasts - especially with accelerating production of #EV's electric vehicles -- lithium may have a funding problem. 

Banks are wary, citing everything from the industry's poor track record on delivering earlier projects to a lack of insight into a small, opaque market. 

Without more investment, supplies of the commodity could remain tight, sustaining a boom that already has seen prices triple since 2015.

Lithium companies will need to invest about $12 billion to increase output fivefold by 2025 and keep pace with the world's growing appetite for batteries, according to Galaxy Resources Ltd., an Australian producer seeking to build further operations in Argentina and Canada. 

Developers say that, so far, projects aren't getting financed fast enough to achieve that leap.

Lithium's Top Challenge Is Finding Funds, Not the Battery Metal

Mariko Ishikawaupdated an hour ago

Altura Mining's lithium operation on May 2018. Source: Altura Mining."

Battery producers and automakers "have absolutely no clue on how long it takes to be able to put a mining project into operation," said Guy Bourassa, chief executive officer of Nemaska Lithium Inc., which spent about 18 months piecing together a complex C$1.1 billion ($830 million) funding program for a mine and processing plant in Quebec. "There will be a big problem -- it's going to be an impediment" to raising supply, he said.

Going deep for a rich #copper deposit, @RioTinto & @BHPBilliton pioneering #sensors & #AutonomousVehicles tech to data integration

Mining a Mile Down: 175 Degrees, 600 Gallons of Water a Minute

Steven Norton STEVEN.NORTON@wsj.com

June 7, 2017 10:31 p.m. ET

SUPERIOR, Ariz.—One of the world’s largest untapped copper deposits sits 7,000 feet below the Earth’s surface. It is a lode that operator Rio Tinto RIO 2.11% PLC wouldn’t have touched—until now.

Not that long ago, anabundance of high-grade copper could be mined out of shallower openpits. But as those deposits are depleted and high-grade copper becomestougher to find, firms such as Rio have been compelled to mine deeperunderground.
 ...
Advances in mining technology are making that possible—just as developments in oil and gas drilling heralded the fracking revolution. Now, using everything from sensors and data analytics to autonomous vehicles and climate-control systems, Rio aims  to pull ore from more than a mile below ground, where temperatures can  reach nearly 175 degrees Fahrenheit.
....
A 15-minute elevator ride 6,943 feet down Resolution’s No. 10 mine shaft leads to a dimly lighted cavern where warm water falls from the rocks like rain. Electrical gear buzzes constantly, and a  network of pipes pumps water out of the shaft at the rate of 600 gallons a minute. A ventilation system cools the area to 77 degrees.

Over the next few years, Rio plans to deploy tens of thousands of electronic sensors, as  well as autonomous vehicles and complex ventilation systems, to help it bring 1.6 billion tons of ore to the surface over the more than 40-year projected life of the mine.

 

Data coming from those sensors will be fed into analytics engines that will help monitor tasks  ranging from  underground blasts to the movement of autonomous vehicles.

...

Rio hopes analytics will help to break down organizational silos. Rather than one person viewing data about a specific part of the mining process, information from across the mine can be sent to a single place where experts can obtain a more holistic view of operations.

“It is taking a lot of the decision-making out of the hands of the operator and putting it into a group of specialists who can manage the whole system,” Mr. Stegman said. ..

Read the rest of the article here:Mining a Mile Down: 175 Degrees, 600 Gallons of Water a Minute:

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