The world is rich in lithium, an essential element in electric vehicle batteries. Although lithium is usually mined from hard rock, most of the world’s lithium reserves are actually found in brines, which are salty water below the surface.
Today, brine mining involves evaporating brine in large, brightly colored pools over about 18 months, leaving high concentrations of lithium behind. It’s a simple but inefficient process that takes up a lot of land and damages the ecology.
As automakers around the world work toward extremely ambitious electric vehicle production targets, there’s growing interest in doing things differently.
“The automotive industry needs a 20-fold increase in lithium supply that cannot be achieved with traditional technologies,” said Dave Snydacker, founder and CEO of Lilac Solutions.
Lilac is one of many companies piloting a series of largely unproven new technologies called direct lithium extraction (DLE) that could improve efficiency and reduce negative externalities in the brine mining process.
Instead of concentrating lithium by evaporating brine in large ponds, DLE pulls brine directly into a processing unit that separates the lithium through a series of chemical processes before injecting it into the ground. The process produces battery-grade lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide within hours, eliminating the need to send concentrated brine to a separate processing facility.
DLE could also help kick-start the domestic lithium mining market. Today, most brine lithium mining takes place in the Salar de Atacama, a vast salt flat in northern Chile that contains some of the world’s highest-quality brine lithium. But DLE technology requires far less land and could help free up resources in areas where brines contain less lithium and more impurities.
North American companies Lilac Solutions, EnergyX and Standard Lithium are exploring for lithium resources in the Smackover Formation in Arkansas, the Salton Sea in California and the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and abroad in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. The Chilean government even announced that all new lithium projects will be required to use DLE technology.
“So the time is ripe for this project to be available soon,” said Amit Patwardhan, EnergyX’s chief technology officer.
Direct lithium extraction company EnergyX is building demonstration plants in Argentina, Chile, California, Utah and Arkansas.
EnergyX
do things differently
In a pre-EV world, traditional methods of brine mining and hard rock mining would have sufficed to meet global lithium demand.
“The world hasn’t needed DLE for the past 50 years. The main uses of lithium have been in industry – ceramics, glass and lubricants,” said Robert Mintak, CEO of Standard Lithium.
But now there is a supply crunch as demand for electric vehicles and the lithium-ion batteries that power them is booming.
“Over the past 10 years, 90% of new lithium production has come from hard rock projects. But hard rock projects are getting more expensive as we move into lower-grade resources. If you add up all the hard rock projects, there just aren’t enough resources to meet the automaker’s goals. It’s these brine resources that could be enough to electrify the auto industry,” Snydacker said.
DLE is already used to some extent in Argentina and China, and companies Livent and Sunresin are implementing commercial technologies that combine DLE with traditional evaporation pond operations.
These companies all rely on a technique called adsorption, which is the only commercially proven DLE method. During this process, lithium molecules in the brine stick to the sorbent material, removing them from surrounding impurities. But experts say extracting lithium from sorbents requires vast amounts of fresh water, a big problem given that many of the world’s best brine resources are located in arid regions.
Livent’s latest sustainability report shows that it uses 71.4 metric tons of freshwater for every metric ton of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) produced. Lilac reports that it used 10 to 20 metric tons of fresh water in pilot tests, while EnergyX says it used less than 20 metric tons.
China-based Sunresin says it recycles all its fresh water and that its new project will operate without evaporation ponds.
But many other companies are now entering the industry, testing alternative technologies that they claim can not only eliminate evaporation ponds entirely, but also increase production while reducing energy and freshwater requirements.
new player
Bay Area-based Lilac Solutions is using a technology called ion exchange. It is currently working with Australian lithium company Lake Resources to trial its technology in Argentina.
“With clove ion-exchange beads, we developed a ceramic material. The ceramic selectively absorbs lithium from the brine while releasing protons. Once the lithium is absorbed into the material, we flush the lithium out of the beads with dilute acid. This creates a lithium chloride concentrate that can be easily processed into battery-grade chemicals,” Snydacker explained.
Lilac Solutions is working with Australian lithium company Lake Resources to develop a direct lithium extraction facility in Argentina.
lilac solution
Lilac expects its first commercial-scale module to be operational by the end of 2024. The company is backed by BMW and Bill Gates-funded Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Ford has signed a nonbinding agreement to buy lithium from its Argentinian plant.
Located in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Austin, Texas, EnergyX employs a diverse portfolio of technologies that can be customized for specific brine resources. The first step is traditional adsorption, followed by a method called “solvent extraction,” in which concentrated brine is mixed with an organic liquid. The lithium is then transferred to the organics, which are then stripped and concentrated. Membrane filtration is the final stage and removes any remaining impurities.
“So you’re seeing all these cycles and synergies that come from combining these technologies,” Patwardhan said. “That’s another big differentiator of what EnergyX has done, and it’s what’s really driving the cost of the technology to be much lower than anybody else’s.”
EnergyX is building demonstration plants with undisclosed partners in Argentina, Arkansas, Chile, California and Utah, and plans to have the first two plants up and running by the end of this year.Most recently, the company secured $50 million in funding General Motors Help expand its technology.
Vancouver-based Standard Lithium also has big supporters. The public company’s largest investor is Koch Industries, which has been operating a demonstration plant in South Arkansas for the past three years, producing lithium at an existing bromine plant.
The company uses ion exchange and adsorption technologies depending on the resource. It expects to begin construction on a commercial-scale DLE facility next year and expand to Texas.
“We have the opportunity to expand from Arkansas to Texas, become the largest lithium chemical production area in North America, utilize it in areas that are not water stressed, and gain a social license to operate,” Mintak said.
Companies that are entering the U.S. market, such as Standard Lithium, stand to benefit from the Deinflation Act, which ties electric vehicle subsidies to domestic procurement of battery materials. Automakers can also get full EV credits if they source from countries with which the U.S. has a free trade agreement, such as Chile.
While Chile has announced that all new lithium projects in the country must use DLE technology, it has not yet announced which companies will be partnered with these new projects.
Neighboring Bolivia is considering using technology from EnergyX and Lilac Solutions to help unlock the country’s vast but largely untapped lithium resources. The government eventually hired a consortium of Chinese companies led by battery giant CATL to spearhead DLE work on its salt flats.
For the rest of the decade, most new lithium supply will continue to come from hard rock projects, Snydacker said. “But by the end of the decade, we’re going to see very large-scale brine projects coming online…” he predicts. “Going into the next decade, this technology will provide most of the new supply.”
Overall, lithium production at DLE is expected to grow from about 54,000 metric tons today to 647,500 metric tons by 2032, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. The estimated value is approximately $21.6 billion.
“But when we compare it relatively to other markets around the world, it’s only about 15% of the total supply,” said James Mills, principal consultant at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “So we’re still going to have to rely on traditional lithium plant production way, whether it’s evaporation ponds or hard rock mining.”
Watch the video to learn more about companies looking to bring direct lithium extraction mainstream.