Agrimin geotechnical study confirms good conditions for Mackay pond development

THE DRILL SERGEANT: Agrimin (ASX: AMN) has completed a geotechnical study for the company’s 100 per cent-owned owned Mackay sulphate of potash (SOP) project.

The company described the study to be a de-risking milestone for the project, identifying brine extraction and pond development as the largest barriers to the commercial viability of brine potash projects globally.

“The outcomes of the geotechnical study confirm that the natural lakebed surface in the south-western area of Lake Mackay has favourable geotechnical conditions for the application of un-lined solar evaporation ponds,” Agrimin said in its ASX announcement.

“The study also confirmed that the in-situ lakebed materials are suitable to construct the evaporation pond walls as cut-to-fill structures.

“Importantly, the above assumptions imply that the ponds can be constructed using the lowest cost construction method possible.”

Agrimin explained the preliminary pond design is based on a total area of approximately 50 square kilometres to accommodate the anticipated annual brine supply of 68,000,000 cubic metres from the proposed trenching network.

The company said the total plan area is comparable to the area used for evaporation ponds throughout Western Australia’s solar salt industry, ranging from 16sqk2 at the Lake MacLeod salt operation to 100sqkm at the Dampier salt operation.

“The Mackay project will extract large volumes of hypersaline brine from a trenching network on the lakebed surface,” Agrimin continued.

“This brine will be transferred into large-scale solar evaporation ponds in which the brine will be concentrated to facilitate the precipitation of potash salts.

“After a drying period, the potash salts will be harvested from the ponds as feed material for the processing plant and converted into SOP.”

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