British Columbia-based AJN Resources (CSE: AJN) announced today that the company has acquired additional claims at the Salt Wells lithium project, located in western Nevada, 25 kilometres southeast of Fallon.
With this acquisition, the company's claims grew from 78 to 105, and now total 850 hectares. These claims cover several major northwest trending faults that were detected by a magnetotellurics geophysical survey, which defined structures, brine location and the depth of the basin. AJN plans to use this information to target a planned drilling program.
At the same time, the exploration company just completed a systematic surface salt grid sampling program across the entire claim block. Results are expected shortly and will be contoured for lithium and boron to define surface highs that may indicate shallow structures.
In May 2017, samples of salt evaporites were collected from the playa or dry lake bed and the best sample returned a value of 212.0 ppm lithium. In parallel, AJN says five out of 10 total samples returned anomalous values exceeding 57.0 ppm lithium.
The miner said Salt Wells presents all the characteristics of the best lithium brines in the world: It is located in an arid climate; it has a closed basin containing a playa; it shows a tectonically driven subsidence; there are mechanisms for freeing lithium ions from simple compounds; it has suitable lithium source rocks; it includes adequate aquifers; it has had sufficient time to concentrate a brine; and it possibly includes geothermal heat to improve the leaching of lithium from sediments.
The miner has an option to acquire 100% of the property from Great Basin Oil.