The 10,300-acre site in Big Smoky Valley, Nevada, was discovered by the American Battery Technology Company (ABTC), critical battery materials company that makes technologies for primary minerals manufacturing and secondary minerals lithium-ion battery recycling.
ABTC already owns the land where the discovery was made, which is part of its Tonopah Flats Lithium Project.
According to ABTC, the site encompasses 517 unpatented lode claims. ABTC began surface sampling of these claims in the summer of 2021, and subsequently performed multiple subsurface drilling programs.
The lithium, which is an essential material in many batteries used in consumer electronics, is deposited in claystone and, according to a third-party analysis of the site, open-pit mining of the site could lead to at least 200,000 tons of claystone per day being processed at the site.
"Having identified one of the largest premier lithium deposits in the US is extremely exciting," said ABTC CEO Ryan Melsert. "However, the identification of an inferred resource in and of itself is not enough to address our critical challenges of increasing our domestic production of critical battery metals, reducing the costs of manufacturing of these battery metals, and decreasing the environmental impacts of their production."