Just recently, this company acquired what could potentially be one of the world’s largest lithium prizes – a 1,977 acre-property located in the Salta province of Argentina.

That property, known as the Pocitos 1 Lithium Salar, had been explored by its previous owner. And it was considered to be too costly – and too difficult – for extraction. Based on test drilling, geologists believe that this property could contain vast amounts of lithium.

And thanks to this innovative new mining technology, this property could soon be producing an enormous amount of lithium.

In fact, experts project the property could produce an average of 20,000 metric tons of carbonate a year. And it can be done cost-effectively with a few strategically placed drill holes. At current prices, that amount of lithium would bring in around $1.2 billion a year for decades to come.

Here’s how this new technology works:

Lithium is typically found in underground aquifers of salt-rich water known as brine. This brine usually contains between 100 and 1,000 parts per million (ppm) of lithium. It’s pumped into a series of large, shallow ponds on the surface where solar evaporation concentrates the lithium in the brine to about 6,000 ppm.

From there, the brine goes to a processing plant where it’s chemically treated to extract and refine the lithium. The entire process is a lengthy one, taking anywhere from 18 to 24 months. This was the initial plan for the Pocitos 1 property.

Based on test drilling, geologists believe there is a vast amount of carbonate under foot at Pocitos 1 – miles wide, miles long…and over 1,300 feet deep.

Thanks to this test drilling, the original owners knew about the vast deposits of lithium rich brine beneath the property. But they also discovered magnesium on the property, which has a strong bond with lithium and can make the refining process more complicated. So the mine’s original owners determined that it would be cost-prohibitive for them to refine using traditional mining techniques.

Shortly after the discovery of magnesium, the owners of Pocitos 1 sold off the “worthless” property. Little did they know, the buyer had an ace up its sleeve in the form of a renowned geologist — and energy-sector legend in Argentina — named Phillip Thomas.

Phillip is famous in the industry for having led the Rincon Lithium project that sold to Rio Tinto for $825 million, as well as the Pozuelos lithium project that sold to Ganfeng Lithium for $925 million.

More importantly, he recently teamed up with a brilliant group of engineers at the University of Melbourne to develop a groundbreaking new chemical solvent exchange process that’s able to break the strong magnesium-lithium bond.

The result is a proprietary process for extracting lithium from magnesium-rich brine that’s fast, effective, and profitable. 

Not only that, it has a 97.1% recovery rate of the lithium from the brine, ultimately, producing 99.6% pure carbonate. This is a remarkable achievement in itself when you consider that surrounding mines only have a 60% to 70% recovery rate with traditional brining methods.

Bottom line: This breakthrough innovation turned Pocitos 1 from a worthless plot of barren land into a massive mining project that could produce lithium valued at more than $1.2 billion annually.

Better yet, this new process – known as Ekosolve^TM – is light years faster than conventional methods.

With the Ekosolve^TM process, the brine is pumped directly into a filtering and washing system that extracts and refines the lithium using a continuous, four-stage process. It then returns the leftover brine back to the source aquifer where it came from. In other words, it eliminates the need for evaporation ponds, which take up many acres and blight the landscape.

Furthermore, it takes a mere three hours — yes, just three hours — instead of the 18 to 24 months required with conventional processing.

The Ekosolve^TM technology is also faster, more efficient and environmentally sustainable — with minimal disruption to the environment and local communities.