Australian junior company Salt Lake Potash Ltd., Perth, Western Australia, said Oct.8 it has secured approval from the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS) to construct a pond system to dewater the Williamson Pit at Lake Way. Lake Way is one of nine salt lakes comprising the company’s Goldfields Salt Lakes project covering a 3,300 km-area in Western Australia. The Williamson Ponds will be the first operational scale sulfate of potash (SOP) evaporation ponds built across the project, and to be built on a salt lake in Australia.
The DMIRS has now given approval to Salt Lake Potash to construct ponds totalling up to 133 ha, as well as ancillary infrastructure and a trench to provide conditioning brine to manage the chemistry of the brine extracted from the Williamson Pit, Salt Lake Potash said.
The Williamson Pit has a JORC measured resource of 1.26Gl of brine at an average SOP grade of 25kg/m2. Construction of the Williamson Ponds will proceed upon completion of final engineering designs and contractor engagements, and completion of formal documents with Blackham Resources Ltd. the owner of the Williamson Pit, as well as satisfaction of aboriginal heritage requirements, said the SOP developer.
It plans to shortly start initial construction of a demonstration plant at Lake Way, producing up to 50,000 mt/y of SOP. In April, it inked an offtake agreement with Mitsubishi Australia Ltd. and Mitsubishi Corp. with sales and offtake rights for up to 50 percent of the SOP production from the demonstration plant (GM April 13, p. 31) and last week, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) setting out the basis for the second offtake agreement for the Goldfields Salt Lakes project with Sinofert Holdings Ltd. (GM Oct. 5, p. 28).