In China, a handful of commercial projects already use Chinese DLE innovator Sunresin’s technology.Ĭarmakers, meanwhile, are lining up to secure DLE lithium supplies: GM is backing Austin, Texas–based EnergyX and Tesla’s lithium supplier Livent, which has a DLE facility in Argentina, while BMW buys lithium from Livent and has invested in California startup Lilac Solutions. The world’s top lithium producers, Albemarle and SQM, plan to test their own DLE technologies this year. Summit is one of more than a dozen young companies piloting new DLE processes with the intent of commercial production as early as 2025. So you get more lithium out with minimal disruption.”Īt Summit Nanotech’s direct-lithium-extraction pilot plant in Chile’s Atacama Desert, tanks behind the equipment trailer hold six pilot-program customers’ brines for lithium extraction. “The goal is to not add any chemicals or change the temperature or pH of the brines. “We pump up the brine, take out only lithium, and put the brine back underground,” says Jeremy Patt, chief technology officer at Calgary-based Summit Nanotech. But in contrast to shale’s fracking risks, DLE brings environmental benefits, reducing land and water use, and waste. Much as shale extraction did for oil, DLE is a “potential game-changing technology for lithium supply,” because it could unlock new sources of lithium, according to a recent report by Goldman Sachs.

These direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies take hours instead of months and could double the production of lithium from existing brine operations.

To keep up, many companies are now developing processes to chemically or physically filter out lithium from brines and inject the brine back underground. With the EV and energy-storage markets accelerating, demand for lithium will increase over 20 times by 2040, according to CleanTech Lithium. It also evaporates nearly 2 million liters of local water resources, harming indigenous communities. The process takes 12 to 18 months, leaving behind piles of waste containing other metals. Under these flats lie reservoirs of brine that contain upwards of 58 percent of the world’s lithium.įor decades, producers have extracted that lithium by pumping the water up to the surface and letting it evaporate until the lithium salts become concentrated enough to filter out. High in the Andes mountains where the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile intersect, white expanses of salt stretch for thousands of kilometers.

Life Changer instal the new