TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Quebec-focused lithium producer Canada Lithium on Tuesday said it had received official approval from the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) to operate the new process plant kiln at its flagship Quebec Lithium project, near Val d'Or.

Canada Lithium said following an on-site field evaluation on Monday, the CSA had granted approval for the company to operate its process plant kiln, which would allow the company to start the commissioning process for various hydrometallurgical circuits within the plant that, owing to their integration into the kiln circuit, could not be precommissioned.

These included the kiln input conveyor, kiln filters and baghouse installations, kiln bed, kiln discharge conveyor, lithium sulphate circuit, carbon dioxide supply system, lime addition circuit and reverse osmosis water systems, as well as various process control systems.

The heating of the kiln to operational temperatures of about 1 000 °C would require several days.

The circuits that were operated intermittently with limited lithium sulphate feedstock during the CSA inspection process, such as the sodium carbonate circuits and the various stages of precipitation, leaching, filtration and packaging would be sequentially integrated into the newly commissioned circuits.

With the CSA kiln approval in place, the company said it expected first shipments of lithium carbonate to take place in June. Throughout the CSA inspection process, the company said it had maintained a close dialogue with offtake partners, Tewoo ERDC and Marubeni.

Meanwhile, with the onset of spring weather conditions, the Ministère du Développement Durable, de l'Environnement de la Faune et des Parcs met with Golder Associates, Canada Lithium’s tailings management facility geotechnical consultant, and the company for an on-site inspection on Monday, following the March clear water discharge from a storage cell within the tailings storage facility at its Quebec Lithium project.

It was expected that the remediation work scope would now be finalised and remediation work would start.

The company’s Toronto-listed stock was trading 5.08% higher on Tuesday morning at C$0.62 apiece.