The Nice Salt Lake isn’t an apparent place to develop a lithium mine. The Salton Sea boasts lithium concentrations of just below 200 elements per million. Argentina, the place Lilac has one other take a look at facility, has sources of above 700 elements per million.
Right here on the Nice Salt Lake? “It’s 70 elements per million,” Raef Sully, Lilac’s Australia-born chief government, tells me. “So in the event you had a soccer stadium with 45,000 seats, this could be three individuals.”
For Lilac, that is really a characteristic of the placement. “It’s a really, superb demonstration of the potential of our know-how,” Sully says. Displaying that Lilac’s {hardware} can extract lithium at excessive purity ranges from a brine with low focus, he says, proves its versatility. That wasn’t the rationale Lilac chosen the positioning, although. “Utah is a mining pleasant state,” says Elizabeth Pond, the vp of communications. And although the lake water has low concentrations of lithium, extracting the brine merely requires working a hose into the water, whereas different areas would require digging a nicely at nice value.
After I accompanied Sully to the take a look at website throughout my tour, our route following unpaved county roads lined with fields of untamed sunflowers. The power itself is little greater than an assortment of transformed transport containers and two cell trailers, one to function the primary workplace and the opposite as a discipline laboratory to check samples. It’s off the grid, counting on diesel turbines that the corporate says will likely be changed with propane items as soon as this location is transformed to a everlasting facility however might finally be swapped for geothermal know-how tapping right into a scorching rock useful resource positioned close by. (Photo voltaic panels, Sully clarifies, couldn’t provide the 24-7 energy provide the power will want.) Nevertheless it is determined by its connection to the Nice Salt Lake by way of that prolonged hose.
ALEXANDER KAUFMAN
Pumped uphill, the lake water passes by means of a sequence of filters to take away solids till it leads to a vessel crammed with the corporate’s specifically designed ceramic beads, comprised of a patented materials that draws lithium ions from the water. As soon as saturated, the beads are put by means of an acid wash to take away the lithium. The remaining brine is then repeatedly examined and, as soon as deemed secure to launch again into the lake, pumped again right down to the shore by means of an outgoing tube within the hose. The lithium resolution, in the meantime, is stockpiled in tanks on website earlier than transport off to a processing plant to be became battery-grade lithium carbonate, which is a white powder.
“As a know-how supplier in the long run, if we’re going to have a long time of lithium demand, they need to place their know-how as one thing that may faucet a bunch of markets,” McBride says. “To have a know-how that may doubtlessly economically recuperate several types of sources in several types of environments is an attractive proposition.”
This testing floor gained’t keep this fashion for lengthy. Throughout my go to, Lilac’s crew was beginning to pack up the placement after finishing its demonstration testing. The outcomes the corporate shared completely with me counsel a smashing success, notably for such low-grade brine with quite a few impurities: Lilac’s gear recovered 87% of the out there lithium, on common, with a purity charge of 99.97%.
