Tivan Limited Appoints Hatch for Speewah Pre-Feasibility Study Engineering Review

About Tivan Limited

Tivan Limited (ASX: TVN) is an Australian mineral development company focused on the Speewah Vanadium-Titanium-Iron Project in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. Speewah hosts one of the world’s largest undeveloped vanadium-titanium deposits, with a total JORC resource of 4.7 billion tonnes containing 2.3Mt V2O5 and 21Mt TiO2.

Tivan is focused on realizing the potential of Speewah through development of a salt roast processing operation to produce vanadium and titanium products. The company is also progressing its TIVAN+ hydrometallurgical technology in collaboration with CSIRO, which provides a pathway to produce vanadium electrolyte for vanadium redox flow batteries.

With its unique mineral endowment, proprietary processing technologies and renewable energy advantages, Tivan aims to establish Speewah as a globally significant producer of energy storage materials critical to the renewable energy transition.

Appointing Premier Global Engineering Firm Hatch

In September 2023, Tivan appointed leading international engineering group Hatch to conduct an engineering review supporting the pre-feasibility study (PFS) for the salt roast processing pathway at the Speewah Vanadium-Titanium-Iron Project.

Hatch is a global engineering firm with extensive minerals processing experience across 150 countries. Their capabilities in vanadium processing and project delivery will be critical in progressing the Speewah PFS.

Key aspects of Hatch’s engineering review include:

• Evaluating Tivan's project scoping and previous studies to identify any gaps ahead of the PFS.
• Defining the process design basis including plant capacity, concentrate specifications and waste management.
• Confirming the beneficiation and salt roast flowsheet for the PFS.
• Advising on any additional PFS-level testwork required.

The appointment follows an extensive selection process by Tivan and its technical advisors. Hatch stood out based on its specialized vanadium expertise and credentials in minerals engineering.

Hatch has been involved with multiple vanadium projects globally involving various vanadium resources. This experience will be applied at Speewah to deliver a robust process design and engineering review.

The work will enable Tivan to move forward with confidence into the PFS after completing Hatch’s engineering review over a 2 month period.

Advancing Speewah Salt Roast Processing Pathway

Development of a conventional salt roast processing operation is Tivan’s priority pathway to initial production at Speewah. Salt roasting provides a well-established approach to extract and process vanadium from titanomagnetite ores like those at Speewah.

The planned operation comprises:

• Mining of titanomagnetite ore from Speewah’s abundant surface deposits.
• Beneficiation by crushing, grinding and magnetic separation to produce a magnetite concentrate.
• Salt roasting of the concentrate with sodium salts to yield soluble vanadium and titanium compounds.
• Processing through proven hydrometallurgical methods to produce high purity vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) and ferrovanadium products.

Focusing initially on a salt roast flowsheet allows Tivan to commercialize Speewah in the nearest term to establish vanadium production.

The workstreams for mining, infrastructure and approvals will also support the longer term TIVAN+ processing pathway. This provides Tivan with flexibility to adopt new technologies over time.

Partnering with CSIRO to Develop TIVAN+ Technology

In parallel, Tivan is collaborating with Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, to develop the TIVAN+ hydrometallurgical processing technology.

The TIVAN+ flowsheet aims to economically extract vanadium, iron and titanium from Speewah ores through an innovative hydrometallurgical process. The goal is to produce higher value vanadium electrolyte products for vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB) used in large scale energy storage.

Under the partnership, CSIRO will conduct further test work and flowsheet refinement to optimize the TIVAN+ process.

While the TIVAN+ pathway remains at the research phase, it provides Tivan with a value-adding alternative process route at Speewah.

In time, TIVAN+ has the potential to establish Speewah as a fully integrated mine-to-battery operation producing vanadium electrolyte for VRFBs.

Conclusion

With the appointment of Hatch to oversee the engineering review for its Pre-Feasibility Study, Tivan Limited is advancing the restart of its globally significant Speewah Vanadium-Titanium-Iron Project.

Development is focused on a conventional salt roast processing pathway to achieve initial vanadium production within the next 3-4 years.

Beyond this, Tivan’s collaboration with CSIRO provides technology upside through the TIVAN+ process to produce high value vanadium electrolytes for energy storage batteries.

Speewah’s unique endowment positions Tivan to become a major producer of vanadium and titanium products critical to the global energy transition.

The Company offers investors exposure to in-demand new energy metals, with near-term production potential and longer term growth optionality.