RE:PP1-R-25allyboys wrote: From the PR it appears that hole PP1-R-25 did not hit brine until it was down 90 meters deep. The part I don't understand is that the new deep hole was very close to PP1-R-25 and hit brine starting from 11 meters. Please help me understand? I have not found a map of the hole locations.
Good for you that you noticed and that you ask for an explanation :-)
I'm so confident about the 3Q salar, that issues like that don't even register anymore when reading a PR.
I'll try to answer your question: (no expert opinion though, just rambling on)
You'll have to remember that it's taken a couple of million years to fill the previous rock valley, depth proven to be 600-700m deep (seismic study some years ago), with brine and all kind of debris coming from the surrounding mountains and other sources.
You cannot assume that this has always happened in the orderly fashion it is still being filled with brine and solid materials, during all these thousands of millennia.
Although the whole volume of the salar, from top to maximum depth is filled with rubble, salts and brine, there may be local differences in the liquid brine composition.
E.g. there may have been a period of say 10,000 years with little rain (=little brine into the valey) and terrible dust storms which deposited a layer of, later compressed and very dense, dust on (parts) of the then existing surface.
Note: Parts of Europe are covered in Mongolian dust (1 or more meters), in present days, it happens regularly that parts of Europe are covered with a very thin film of Saharan dust. Happens even these days in the Middle East as well (from Iraq down into the gulf and surrounding nations.
A 20-50cm thick, compressed (at a later stage) layer of clay, may very well be a dividing wall/floor between brine bodies (aquifers).
Much/most of the salar volume consists of precipitated salts. When a solution exceeds it's saturation percentage of certain ions in the liquid, the ions cannot do otherwise than precipitate from the liquid into solids. When the liquid remains high (above saturation level) in these ions, these solids will never dissolve into the liquid again.
Note: This is also the process used for enriching the brine in the ponds.
There are other factors that influence local content of the brine:
Equilibrium in liquids, liquid viscosity, gravity, porosity, diffusion and a few more.
I could go on, but my thumbs (for typing) are getting a bit tired.
To let myself off easily, I'll pretend to be a "smart aleck":
Look at the title of the PR.
Maybe the first 90 meters don't fall into the author's definition of "High Grade" and is not considered to be mentionable. Most assuredly there's brine in there as well.
With regard to the drill map, get the PFS from SEDAR, it's in there.
In case someone is interested in some 20 downloaded previous company presentations, show me how to make them publically accessible and I'll upload them.
Have fun.