Preliminary Third Party Report Leads St-George to Accelerate Plans to File for Patents on Extraction for Lithium in Clays

2017-12-27 / @thenewswire

(TheNewswire)

Montreal, Quebec / TheNewswire / December 27, 2017 – St-Georges Eco-Mining Corp. (CSE: SX) (OTC: SXOOF) (FSE: 85G1) is pleased to release the findings of the preliminary report provided by the third party contractor hired to execute certain tests in relation to St-Georges’ research initiatives related to the extraction of lithium in clays.

The first stage of the mandate given to Dundee Sustainable Technologies (CSE:DST) was to characterize the material from the Bonnie Claire Lithium Property - provided by Iconic Minerals Ltd (TSX-V: ICM) - and to test it using currently knowns extraction techniques, commercially deployed or known in the public domain from academic research. St-Georges will work strategically with all the potential suppliers to optimize for total cost of ownership and develop a green foot print. This will include solvent extraction, membranes and electrolysis to make a lithium product that meets or exceeds industry standards.

The extraction techniques evaluated can achieve recoveries between 80% to 99.9% with a purity of 99.9%. St-Georges is focused on total capital and operating costs with a green foot print. The ecological focus is achieved, in part, by converting by products into saleable forms. St-Georges management is encouraged by the recent developments and is now looking to expand the scope of its analysis in regards to what might be patentable in its extraction methods.

The economic nature of St-Georges proposed technology in relation to the Bonnie Claire project cannot be established prior to the definition of a NI 43-101 Resources Estimate and a Preliminary Economical Assessment of the Bonnie Claire Project. However, the characterization of the material provided by Iconic to St-Georges allows for a certain amount of limited hypothesis. The high percentage of silica and alumina characterized in the material processed from Bonnie Claire makes an already interesting concentration of lithium stand out in the remaining segregated material. The report also hint at are other elements that might be worth recovering like potassium and other agricultural focused by products. The next phase of process optimization will be initiated in January. St George is encouraged by the initial characterization results.

Enrico Di Cesare, St-Georges’ director and vice-president research & development commented: “We are looking forward to working closely with the Iconic exploration team and characterizing and testing the results in parallel of their exploration effort on Bonnie Claire. Our technical team is looking forward to optimizing the process for recovery of lithium and salable by-products with a focus on being ecologically green”.

“(…) Our R&D initiative related to lithium bearing clay is progressing well. Shareholders and stakeholders need to keep in mind however that we still have more challenges in the near future. The next 2-3 months will be critical for the development of the lithium-in-clay (LiC) extraction process. It's important to note when studying the history of science that a significant amount of disruptive technologies never made it outside of a controlled laboratory environment. The demonstration of commercial scalability is still the make or break milestone that we need to secure and we do not have any guarantee of success at this point in time. If that milestone is achieved, we will then have the privilege of embarking into the exciting endeavor of bringing a mine to production. (…) over the months and years period that this task might entails” - said St-Georges’ CEO Frank Dumas.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

“Enrico Di Cesare

ENRICO DI CESARE, DIRECTOR, VICE-PRESIDENT RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

About St-Georges

St-Georges is developing new technologies to solve the some of the most common environmental problems in the mining industry.

The Company controls directly or indirectly, through rights of first refusal, all of the active mineral tenures in Iceland. It also explores for nickel on the Julie Nickel Project & for industrial minerals on Quebec's North Shore and for lithium and rare metals in Northern Quebec and in the Abitibi region. Headquartered in Montreal, St-Georges' stock is listed on the CSE under the symbol SX, on the US OTC under the Symbol SXOOF and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol 85G1. For additional information, please visit our website at www.stgeorgesplatinum.com

The Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or the accuracy of the contents of this release.