KELOWNA, British Columbia , April 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Enertopia Corporation (ENRT) on the OTC (the "Company" or "Enertopia") has filed its recent NI 43-101 Technical Report: “Lithium Claystone Resource Estimate, Clayton Valley , Esmeralda County, Nevada , USA” on its SEDAR Issuer Profile page.
Enertopia provides the following maiden resource estimate at the Company’s lithium claystone property at Clayton Valley, NV .
At a 400 ppm lithium cut-off, the deposit has 81.7 million tonnes at 1,121 ppm lithium as indicated resources, and 18.1 million tonnes lithium at 1,131 ppm lithium as inferred resources, this equates to 487,887 tonnes indicated and 109,410 tonnes inferred of lithium carbonate equivalent – (“LCE”).
A breakdown of grade and tonnage by resource category and LCE by cut-off values is given in Table 1 below.
Indicated Mineral Resource
400 ppm Li Cutoff
700 ppm Li Cutoff
1000 ppm Li Cutoff
1200 ppm Li Cutoff
Tonnage
81,732,150
75,951,000
59,534,100
34,478,100
Average Grade
1121
1160
1247
1346
Contained Li (kg)
91,656,383
88,129,744
74,225,389
46,424,369
LCE (Tonnes)
487,887
469,115
395,102
247,117
Inferred Mineral Resource
400 ppm Li Cutoff
700 ppm Li Cutoff
1000 ppm Li Cutoff
1200 ppm Li Cutoff
Tonnage
18,165,600
17,252,100
15,999,300
8,913,150
Average Grade
1131
1156
1170
1196
Contained Li (kg)
20,554,207
19,948,516
18,719,880
10,664,088
LCE (Tonnes)
109,410
106,186
99,646
56,765
Table 1
SOME KEY POINTS FROM 43-101 Report:
Preliminary testing for the extraction of the lithium from the mined material has indicated that the material will be relatively inexpensive to process.
From the preliminary testing, the sediments will not require crushing or grinding prior to processing but may require some preprocessing to upgrade the material by removing the coarser fraction, which has been found to be of lower grade.
The type of processing envisioned will have a much smaller footprint than lithium brine operations, which now employ large evaporation ponds, making the proposed operation more environmentally friendly.
Table 2 below shows the average grade of each major lithologic unit within the model. the reduced sediments tend to be higher grade than the oxidized units and are in bold below.
Lithologic unit
Weighted average grade Li ppm
Surface Gravel
790
Upper Olive Claystone
834
Main Blue Claystone
1136
Dark Blue Black Claystone
1464
Lower Olive Mudstone
1082
Table 2
Robert McAllister , President and CEO, commented “We are very pleased with our maiden 43-101 resource. We used a higher-grade cutoff and the resource shows very good continuity in resource tonnage as the ppm cutoff is raised to come up with a strong resource number based on the current Lithium market metrics and these are laid out in detail in the company’s maiden 43-101 report.”
The full 43-101 Report can also be found on the company’s website at www.enertopia.com with further details.
The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Douglas Wood , P.Geol, a Certified Professional Geologist who is a Qualified Person with respect to Enertopia’s Clayton Valley Lithium Project as defined under National Instrument 43-101.
