Sal de Vida Brine Project

Overview
The Sal de Vida (Salt of Life) project is located in northwestern Argentina in the Salar del Hombre Muerto. A salar is a predominantly dry lake bed within a restricted drainage basin, normally the dry climate and lack of drainage from the basin results in deposits of salt and borate minerals along with sand and clay intervals. The salar lies approximately 1400 kilometres northwest of Buenos Aires in the Argentinean Andes at an altitude of 4,025 metres. The property is accessible from the city of Salta via an all-season road, and there is a major powerline 115 kilometres away.

Lithium One has options to acquire over 300 square kilometres, or the majority of the eastern portion of the 600 square kilometre Hombre Muerto salar.

The salar surface is usually dry, though a fresh water river that is anomalously high in lithium flows onto the lake bed on the south side of Lithium One’s property. Just below the surface, the pore spaces of the unconsolidated sands, silts, and salt bodies are filled with water. Near surface, this water has been shown to be brackish, a mixture of fresh and salty water. Below approximately 2 meters depth, the water is consistently very salty, or a brine. According to the US Geological Survey, brine is defined as having more than 35,000 ppm total dissolved solids (TDS). The brines at Salar del Hombre Muerto average well over 200,000 ppm TDS. In addition to ordinary table salt (sodium chloride), these brines contain high concentrations of dissolved potassium chloride and lithium chloride, as well as other important constituents such as boron.

The project is believed to have a relatively low technical and permitting risk, as the western portion of the salar has been permitted and in production of lithium since 1997. The western half of the salar is the site of Argentina’s only commercial scale lithium mining operation, Fénix, owned by Minera del Altiplano, a subsidiary of FMC Corporation. The 2008 production from the Fénix operation represented nearly 14% of the total world production of lithium metal, or 10,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate and 7,600 tonnes of lithium chloride. According to FMC’s website, their life of mine at Salar del Hombre Muerto is over 75 years.

At Hombre Muerto the FMC brines have high concentrations of lithium, reportedly averaging about 650 ppm Li. They are also high in potassium, with concentrations averaging around 0.65 wt% K, and low in magnesium, with a Mg:Li ratio of approximately 1.5:1. The ratio of magnesium to lithium in the Hombre Muerto brines is considered low by industry standards. The Salar de Atacama in Chile, the largest lithium producing brine operation in the world, reports Mg:Li ratios of more than 4. The famous Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is plagued by extremely high Mg:Li, more than 14:1 has been reported in the literature. High magnesium content is common in some salar brines, and can increase the production costs of lithium carbonate. In addition to the brines, the near surface of the salar hosts dry mineral deposits of ulexite, a sodium-calcium borate mineral produced from shallow surface mining and mainly used for the production of boric acid.

Disclaimer
The Company has conducted certain research on technical and production data from other operations. The Company has made every effort to be accurate and believes the data cited herein about FMC and their Fénix operation to be reliable. However, the Company cautions that this information with respect to the FMC property and operations could not be verified by the Company and is not necessarily indicative of the mineral endowment on the Sal de Vida Project or the potential production from any future mining on the Sal de Vida Property.