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| THE COMIBOL EVAPORITES DIVISION |
Pilot Plant Opening
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In late 2007, at the request of the region’s members of parliament and FRUTCAS, President Evo Morales personally assigned national experts the task of designing a project to set up a pilot plant to process brine from the Salar de Uyuni.
Through a Supreme Decree enacted on April 1st 2008, the industrialization of the minerals in the Salar de Uyuni was declared a national priority and COMIBOL was instructed to set up an operational division to take charge of the project. The new division was allocated a budget of US$5,700,000.
COMIBOL accordingly included the “NATIONAL EVAPORITE DEPOSITS DIVISION” in its institutional structure, and Mr. Saúl Villegas Requis was appointed as the new division’s director.
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On May 10th 2008, in a major ceremony attended by all the rural communities in the Lípez region, President Evo Morales launched the construction of the pilot plant in Río Grande.
Several meteorological monitoring stations have been set up to measure water table levels in the area of the salt flats with the highest concentration of lithium, finding excellent rates of solar evaporation despite the cold in the winter months. The next steps were to draw up computerized grids of all Bolivia’s salt flats and to take systematic samples from the area of the Salar de Uyuni where levels of lithium and potassium concentration are highest.
Between June and September 2008, the Division reviewed numerous engineering guidelines and carried out several specialized technical and scientific consultations in different parts of the world. It also went ahead with staff recruitment and training, set up its offices in Río Grande, Uyuni, Potosí and La Paz, and began the procurement process. A team of technicians has set up its laboratory and begun the systematic analysis of the numerous samples collected during this time. The main elements that have been found are: lithium, potassium, magnesium, boron, sulphate, chloride and sodium.
Taking advantage of the end of winter, the ground levelling and building work for the pilot plant started on October 1st 2008.
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Construction of Evaporation Pilot Pond
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