Lithium Related Media Articles, page-347

The answer to your question IMO is no provided the process flow sheet at the gravity separator and secondary Heavy Media Separation stages is tested appropriately and works to specs. At the start of the process flowsheet you have magnetic/gravity separators and HMS that work on the different specific gravity of tantalum and lithium and therefore theoretically you can capture the two products and put them down seperate stages of the process flow sheet to recover them etc. When recovered there they then move to separate stages of the flowsheet - one part been your spodumene the other part been your tantulum, so getting to 6.2% is probably around MET tests showing recovery (and removal of impurities) in that part of the flowsheet for Li20. Because the tantulum recovery occurs at the start of a flowsheet, and then is recovered in its own built stage of that flowsheet, getting to 6.2% downstream in the process flowsheet should have no impact IMO on tantulum recovery rates. It just boils down to appropriately designing a process flowsheet to maximise recovery of both within the context of optimising capital/opex costs against the optimal recovery rate etc etc. All IMO