The southwest of England is famous for its beautiful coastline, lush countryside and fresh seafood. If all goes to plan, another chain could be added to the region’s supply in the next few years: lithium extraction.
In Cornwall, efforts are underway to tap into the area’s natural resources and establish an industry that could one day produce both renewable energy and establish a lithium source. local.
As well as being used in mobile phones, computers, tablets and a host of other devices synonymous with modern life, lithium is also important for electric vehicles and battery storage, two technologies. has a big role to play in the planetary transition to a low and zero emission future.
Examples of how this nascent field could develop over the next few years include Geothermal Engineering Ltd, a company based near the Cornish town of Redruth that develops and operates geothermal projects.
Along with the renewable energy activities already planned, GEL is also working on a pilot project around the extraction of lithium from geothermal waters. It’s a partnership with another company, Cornish Lithium, through a joint venture called GeoCubed.
“The aim is to demonstrate that lithium hydroxide, a key component of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles, can be produced in Cornwall from naturally occurring geothermal water with a low carbon footprint,” GEL said. real zero,” said GEL.
The project in Cornwall focuses on direct lithium mining, or DLE. According to the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the technologies behind DLE “can be grouped into three main categories: adsorption using porous materials allowing lithium binding, ion exchange and solvent extraction.”
While there is excitement about its potential, NREL warns that it “remains a challenging task” to scale the above methods to what it calls “full manufacturability”. .
“For example, developing a solid material that binds only to lithium is a major challenge in geothermal brine containing many minerals and metals,” it said.
‘Irreplaceable’ for a green transition
Projects like the one in Cornwall come at a time when sustainability and ESG concerns are on the rise. The security of the global supply chain is another issue, especially as the bulk of lithium production is currently dominated by countries including Chile, China, Australia and Argentina.
Against this backdrop, the commercialization of less intensive, local, and more accessible ways of sourcing lithium could be critically important in the future.
Major economies and automakers are also laying out plans to increase the number of electric vehicles on our roads. At the same time, the push to expand renewable energy capacity shows no sign of abating.
Julia Poliscanova is senior director of e-mobility at Transport & Environment, a campaign group headquartered in Brussels. Speaking to CNBC, she describes lithium as “no substitute for all of our green transitions.”
When it comes to sustainable sourcing of lithium and other materials, Poliscanova says that, “in the medium to long term, it’s clear that much of it has to come from circular business models, most notably, most notably, circular business models.” is recycling.”
She notes how there will be “really tremendous demand and growth” over the next few decades. This requires, in the short and medium term, new extraction techniques.
Expanding on her stance, Poliscanova said most of the lithium that will be used by 2030 has yet to be extracted.
“That’s where geothermal lithium comes in, because the new lithium, the new resource that we … need, it has to be sustainably mined and has to have the lowest impact on the environment and community,” she said. our coin”.
‘How do I get it out?’
GeoCubed’s £4 million ($5.46 million) pilot plant will focus on a range of direct lithium mining technologies. The overall goal is to eventually develop a commercial plant at GEL’s United Downs Deep Geothermal Power Project.
In an interview with CNBC, Ryan Law, founder and chief executive officer of GEL, outlined the opportunity his business is looking to capitalize on. Beneath its surface, Cornwall is home to a lot of high-lithium granite, Law explained.
“The combination of lithium-rich granite and hot water – hot water can absorb more lithium – means that the water that we bring to the surface at the United Downs to run our power plant can have,” he said. very high lithium content. .
“The next step is: how do we get it out?” Law continued to speak. “And that’s what we’ve been looking at with a number of partners.”
Time change
GEL is among a number of companies looking to develop facilities that focus on direct lithium mining. Along with GeoCubed, Cornish Lithium is also working on a number of other projects.
Elsewhere, in April 2021, Australia is listed Vulcan Energy Resources said its live lithium mining test plant, located in Germany’s Upper Rhine Valley, has started operations.
In the US in November, a company called Thermal Resource Control announced that their drilling program at the Electric and Lithium Hell’s Kitchen project in California had begun.
At the time, CEO Rod Colwell said the company was “on track to deliver the project’s first 50MW of renewables by the end of 2023 and an estimated 20,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide by 2024 .”
The Hell’s Kitchen project is attracting attention from some major players. Last summer, Synthetic engine said it had “agreed to form a strategic commercial and investment partnership with Controlled Heat to secure local and low-cost lithium.”
“As the first investor, GM will have the first rights to the lithium produced by the first phase of the Hell’s Kitchen project, including an option for a multi-year relationship,” the automaker said. This then adds.
Sea of change
These developments are at various stages of progress, but if they can be produced on a large scale, it could lead to a major change in the way lithium is harvested.
According to NREL, much of the lithium is derived from “open-pit deposits or saltwater containing lithium beneath salt flats.”
It describes a second problem involving saltwater containing lithium that is “pumped into large basins where it evaporates in the sun.”
The environmental impacts of such processes can be significant. The NREL said both open-pit mining and the salt flats method “can lead to soil destruction, potential pollution and high water consumption, especially in areas already suffering from drought and desertification.” It adds that they also take up a significant amount of space.
In contrast, DLE allows for “a more sustainable supply of lithium, including the use of geothermal energy as a renewable energy source for production.”
This image shows proof of concept power plant by Geothermal Engineering Ltd on United Downs Industrial Park in Cornwall, UK.
Transport & Environment’s Poliscanova further emphasizes the importance of geothermal lithium in addition to recycling efforts and the idea of a circular economy. She then said that recycling should be “the number one priority.”
Recycling really looks like it will play an important role in the future, especially in the electric vehicle sector. By Elon Musk TeslaFor example, indicate that all their waste lithium-ion batteries are recycled.
And back in November, Swedish battery company Northvolt said it had manufactured its first battery cell with what it described as “100% recycled nickel, manganese and cobalt.”
Push forward
Back in Cornwall, the GeoCubed project continued. Earlier this month, it said it had selected a company called Ross-shire Engineering to provide its pilot plant with support related to engineering, procurement, construction and operations, or EPCC.
Its statement also mentioned an electric submersible pump test conducted by GEL in August 2021, which resulted in the collection of “a large amount of geothermal water.”
GeoCubed said the concentration of lithium in the sample was “encouraging” and added that “other important by-products such as cesium, rubidium and potassium have been shown to be high.”
If all goes according to plan, the pilot facility will be operational by the end of March this year.
