Canada Nickel Announces Improvements to Accelerated CO2 Capture Process

TORONTO, November 8, 2022 – Canada Nickel Company Inc. ("Canada Nickel" or the "Company" - https://www.commodity-tv.com/ondemand/companies/profil/canada-nickel-company-inc/) (TSXV:CNC) (OTCQX:CNIKF) today announced the results of further laboratory test results that build on the success of initial work on the In Process Tailings (“IPT”) Carbonation Process, which is a novel method for accelerated carbon capture that the Company believes has transformative potential.

Mark Selby, Chair and CEO of Canada Nickel commented, “These lab scale tests advance our understanding of how to operationalize this process to turn a nickel mine into a net generator of carbon credits rather than a generator of carbon emissions. In our latest testing, we were able to triple the amount of carbon captured in 24 hours versus our prior test work. Our goal is to develop a process which would utilize existing plant equipment and processes to operationalize our IPT Carbonation process, which is at least 8-12 times faster than current passive approaches and what industry leaders are currently able to achieve, with easier quantification and verification of the amount of carbon captured.”

Figure 1. Improved CO₂ Capture using new process levers

This new set of results from the lab scale test program completed at Kingston Process Metallurgy (“KPM”), utilizing the most reactive tailings stream, demonstrates that changes to two key levers increased the amount of carbon capture in just 24 hours relative to the previous tests by more than three times, and achieved more than 60% of the previously achieved carbon capture level that had taken six days. Understanding the impact of these variables on the carbon capture potential is believed to be key to operationalizing the process.

IPT Carbonation process

Canada Nickel’s Crawford Project is hosted in ultramafic rock, which naturally absorbs and sequesters CO₂. The potential to actively capture and sequester carbon was a key consideration in Canada Nickel’s acquisition of the 42 km² of target ultramafic rocks in Timmins area which could anchor a zero-carbon industrial cluster in Timmins. The challenge has been to develop a process that speeds up the naturally occurring carbon absorption process. Canada Nickel has developed a simple active process that utilizes tailings as generated in the milling process and injects a concentrated source of CO₂ for a brief period of time. This novel process for accelerated mineral carbonation is called In Process Tailings Carbonation or IPT Carbonation, which fixes CO₂ geologically while the tailings are still in the processing circuit, rather than after they have been finally deposited.

While Canada Nickel’s IPT Carbonation process has only been demonstrated at the lab scale and on a limited number of samples, the Company believes that, given its relative simplicity, this process could be scaled up with availability of concentrated (rather than atmospheric) sources of CO₂. This CO₂ could potentially be delivered by downstream processing of Crawford concentrates, a wide range of industrial processing activities, green hydrogen production, carbon capture facilities, or natural gas power generation. The process clearly demonstrates the potential to produce NetZero Nickel^TM and NetZero Cobalt^TM for the EV industry, NetZero Iron^TM and chromium for the stainless steel industry and generate substantial carbon credits during the process. The Company believes that the need for a concentrated source of CO₂ for this process and the substantial CO₂ capture capacity potential of its ultramafic land position could form the basis for an entire zero carbon industrial cluster in the Timmins region.

The IPT Carbonation process utilizes tailings directly from the mineral processing circuit and conditions them with CO₂ for a brief period of time. After this conditioning, the tailings achieved the Net Zero carbon capture target in less than 36 hours and achieved gross carbon capture rates of at least 26 tonnes of CO₂ / tonne of nickel (5 times the amount necessary to achieve Net Zero metal production) in just six days and could produce an estimated average of 710,000 tonnes of CO₂ credits annually and 18 million total tonnes of CO₂ credits over expected life of mine based on the Crawford preliminary economic assessment ("PEA") (see news release dated May 25, 2021). The experimental method and results for IPT Carbonation were initially completed at XPS, Expert Process Solutions, a Glencore Company, and the mechanism was then reproduced at a second independent lab, Kingston Process Metallurgy, adding confidence to the process. No further information is being provided on the method at this time and work is underway to test a wide range of variables to optimize the process.

IPT Carbonation, which is an active process, has benefits over passive mineral carbon capture as the method for quantifying and verifying CO₂ capture is expected to be much simpler. Using a standard carbon balance in the mineral processing facility, the CO₂ captured from IPT Carbonation can be quantified before tailings are discharged into the permanent tailings storage facility such that carbon offsets can be quantified in real time as part of a standard metallurgical accounting system. Canada Nickel expects industry standards to be developed for quantifying CO₂ capture through passive methods as well.

Qualified Person and Data Verification

Arthur G. Stokreef, P.Eng (ON), Manager of Process Engineering & Geometallurgy and a “qualified person” as such term is defined by National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical information in this news release on behalf of Canada Nickel Company Inc.

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