Silicon Valley Startup Lilac Solutions has a method to get a batteries that are cheaper, easier for the environment and less intensively with water than mining: it plans to pull it out of the big lake.
TCould be made an important supplier Lithium for batteries in the coming years after Trump’s administration, he took a share of a huge mines in Nevada. But Silicon Valley Startup Lilac Solutions believes she has a better idea that avoids the highest cost and environmental damage to traditional mining: Express the expensive mineral from the Briny Water to oil fields and sites such as the Great Salt Lake to Yuta instead of digging it from the ground.
Lilac based in Auckland, which refines its own The patented ion exchange technology For the export of lithium since its founding almost a decade ago, it raises $ 250 million to build the first commercial processing installation at Great Salt Lake that could produce 5,000 metric tones of lithium annually by 2028. The remainder of an ancient seas.
Compared to the amount of lithium that can be pulled by conventional mines, “brine is probably larger classes,” Sully said Tower.
“It’s a much smaller environmental footprint. You don’t leave behind a huge open mine.”
Memory projects in the Smackover area that companies such as Standard Lithium, ExxonMobil and Chevron are promising to make hundreds of thousands of tonnes of lithium per year. American geological survey estimated at a Study There could be up to 19 million tonnes of lithium in Smackover only in Arkansas. “We believe that there is enough dissolved lithium in this area to replace US lithium imports and many more,” said USGS hydrologist Katherine Knierim, a major researcher in the study.
Despite the dramatic reversal of Trump’s federal efforts to limit climate change, including killing motives for electric vehicles, the demand for lithium batteries is increasing. Worldwide, the lithium market is worth about $ 28 billion last year and demand could increase by 26% to about 1.5 million tonnes this year, according to Mining.com. This is mainly due to increasing EV sales, the Top battery user which represents over 75% of all lithium and energy storage. And although US EV sales do not grow as quickly as in China and Europe, the demand for batteries to store power from utilities explodes as they seek to hang the surplus power from large -scale solar and wind parks.
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Most of the lithium used in the US comes from Chile and Argentina, but is processed and refined in China. The need to create a stable domestic offer is the reason Chris Wright Energy Secretary said the government agreed last month to take a 5% participation in Lithium Americas Corp.The programmer of The Thorker Pass Mine in Nevada, with the exception of a 5% common rate with General Motors. When it becomes fully functional, later in the decade, the Thacker Pass is expected to produce about 40,000 tonnes of lithium battery lithium per year.
For similar reasons, Trump’s administration in July received a share of $ 400 million in MP materials, the operator of the only US mine that supplies rare land that are required for electric motor magnets.
Employees at the Lilac pilot plant in the big salt lake.
Lilac solutions
While the Thacker Pass Mine contains a huge amount of lithium, its growth has faced years of intense contrast from racial groups in the region and environmentalists. The project is an extensive open -table mine, extending nearly 18,000 acres, with a sulfuric acid plant on the spot to process the raw minerals of commercial quality. It is also expected to consume 1.7 billion gallons of water One year in a barren part of the US southwest that they see exacerbating drought as a result of climate change.
On the contrary, the immediate extraction of lithium from brine is essentially a matter of pumping fluid through a treatment installation and then its shipment from where it comes from.
“It’s a much smaller environmental footprint,” Sully said. “You don’t leave a huge open mine behind. You pull the brine from the ground … and then after the end, the brine returns to the ground, so you don’t really disturb the water table.
Utah’s Environmental Quality Department has not identified problems with the big plans of Lilac Salt Lake and is considering the results of her recently integrated feasibility study, said Benjamin Holcomb, who manages the standards and technical services of the organization
Worldwide, two -thirds of lithium come from evaporated brine lakes, mainly in South America, where the expensive metal is collected as a residue. Although the type of direct mining, or dle mining, the approach that Lilac seeks is not widespread in the US, is in commercial use by other companies in South America and China, said Cameron Perks, director of Intelligence Minerals Minerals based in London.
“Where I think it is interesting is that by 2035, DLE processing technology will produce 51% of the brine supply.”
Managing Director Raef Sully
Lilac solutions
Basically, Lilac believes that his approach is also cheaper than mining. The price of the mineral has been unstable in recent years, but today it sells for about $ 10,000 a ton, which is for what it costs to extract a tone of lithium. While lithium concentration in brine from the large salt lake is only about a quarter or third and the one in particularly rich alphabets in Chile, Argentina or Smackover, Sully estimates that the cost of producing Lilac in Utah will be about $ 7,000 per tonne. The jumper from the formation of smackover, with a higher lithium content, can reduce production costs to about $ 5,000 per tonne or half of mining costs.
If he is right, this could lead to dramatically cheaper EV batteries one day.
Ion exchange technology has passed for a while, usually used in water promotion systems (in which calcium and magnesium ions that make water “hard” are removed as it passes through resin beads). The Lilac solution uses specially made beads that it manufactures in Nevada that extract tiny lithium pieces as the pumping brine passes on them. The collected material is rinsed with a diluted acid solution, delivering a pure lithium -ion solution that then the Lilac is treated in a battery lithium, Sully said.
It is far from the only company with a high -tech approach to pulling lithium from brine. Last year, Researchers at Stanford University He said that they had also developed an export technique capable of producing lithium in less than 40% of mining costs, while using less water and chemicals. Similarly, scientists at Rice; Penn state and Argonne National Laboratory They have also announced many promising discoveries.
The Lilac Solutions pilot plant next to the big lake.
Lilac solutions
California remains optimistic that the Salton Sea area, rich in super hot volcanic brine made deep underground in San Andreas’ error, could be a source of cheap lithium. So far, however, its export and separation from all other materials containing brine – including male, lead, cadmium and even radioactive elements – has proven more difficult than we initially hoped. Lilac briefly followed a project there in 2020 with controlled thermal resources, but soon abandoned it.
“There are challenges associated with very high temperature and materials, including toxic materials, which are dissolved in it,” said Lilac Snydacker founder Tower In 2022. “You need a way to handle these Hazmat issues and put everything back to the basement.”
These toxic elements are not a problem in the big salt lake. And brine from the formation of Smackover looks much more attractive to energy and mineral companies, because lithium concentration is so high, especially in Arkansas.
‘When you get into the bottom of Arkansas, you get 300 [parts per million] Up to a little over 600 ppm, which is quite primary, “said Erik Pollock, a georisticist who manages the isotopes’ fixed laboratory at the University of Arkansa. It is really a game of Arkansa-Texas and maybe a little bit in Louisiana. As you go east.
Bethany Sam, with the Indian colony Reno-sparks, speaks as opposed to Thacker Pass’s Lithium mine in December 2023 in Reno, Nevada.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights are maintained
Thus, while Lilac is developing its own factory in Utah, its goal is to supply its technology to larger businesses. The installation of the Great Salt Lake drawing follows a successful test project there As well as in Argentina, a collaboration with Neptune Energy in Germany and works in other areas. Sully said the company has gathered for the “two -thirds” of $ 250 million aimed at installing Utah and wants to complete the round in the first quarter of 2026.
“There is such a great deal of diversity in the types of salty to get out there that clearly a technology is not going to get the whole business, but I think there is an opportunity to be in the first three to five,” he said. “I want to be part of building this domestic supply chain here in the United States.”
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