In lithium industry first, IBAT commercializes new extraction technology

International Battery Metals

11/07/2024 06:00

* 
      IBAT's DLE tech produces lithium in Utah at nearly 5,000
metric
tons per year
    

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      Portable plant design allows for scalable and relocatable
production
    

        * 
      IBAT's method recycles over 98% of water, addressing high
water
use in lithium industry
    

  
    By Ernest Scheyder
       HOUSTON, July 11 (Reuters) - In a milestone for the
global clean-energy transition, International Battery Metals
 IBAT.CD  has become the first company to commercially produce
lithium with a novel type of filtration technology, a step
expected to usher in cheaper and faster supplies of the
electric-vehicle battery metal.
At a site in rural Utah controlled by privately-held US
Magnesium, IBAT started producing this week commercial volumes
of lithium at a rate of nearly 5,000 metric tons per year using
its version of a direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology. 
     The breakthrough has not been previously reported. 
  
    The company, which developed its DLE plant to be portable,
has essentially beaten Standard Lithium  SLI.V , SLB  SLB.N ,
Rio Tinto  RIO.AX , Eramet  ERMT.PA  and others to be first to
that mark. Industry investors, analysts and customers have
waited years for commercial level output.
With DLE now proven on a commercial scale, it is expected to
grow within a decade into an industry with $10 billion in annual
revenue by transforming the speed and efficiency of lithium
production for EV manufacturers and others, analysts said, much
the way that fracking and horizontal drilling helped boost U.S.
oil production.
IBAT's method is based in part on technology developed by IBAT's
chairman, John Burba, at Dow Chemical in the 1980s. "This is all
about boosting the global supply of lithium," said Burba. "We
feel like we've hit at a critical time for this industry."  
     The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that salty brine
deposits across Europe, Asia, North America and elsewhere are
filled with roughly 70% of the world's reserves of the
ultralight metal.
  
Lithium has historically been produced with evaporation ponds,
which are used to extract the metal from those brines, or
open-pit mines, which are used to remove it from hard rock
deposits. The intensive water use and physical footprint of
those methods, as well as their long development and production
times, sparked the hunt for a third option.
    While DLE technologies vary, they are comparable to common
household water softeners and aim to extract about 90% or more
of the lithium from brines, compared to about 50% using ponds. 
Arcadium Lithium  ALTM.N  and some others use DLE processes in
tandem with ponds, but no DLE technology had previously reached
commercial production without them, sparking competition to
expand output to the many parts of the world where occasional
rainfall makes evaporation ponds impractical. 
    Many brine deposits have varied chemical compositions,
meaning it is unlikely that any single DLE technology -
including IBAT's - will emerge as a global standard, analysts
have said. Many Chinese deposits have high concentrations of
magnesium, for example, and Bolivian deposits - among the
largest in the world - have high potassium levels.
    Lithium has repeatedly proven difficult to separate from
those and other metals often co-mingled with it in brines. That
has confounded many scientists working on DLE technologies for
years. Lithium is also technically a salt, and can prove
corrosive. 
  
The breakthrough for IBAT coincides with a more than 80% drop in
lithium prices in the past year, fuelling layoffs at industry
leader Albemarle  ALB.N , DLE upstart Lake Resources  LKE.AX 
and others. Still, IBAT plans to build more of its plants and
market them for use across the globe. 
     
    STRATEGY
IBAT said the company succeeded with hitting commercial-scale
production partly due to its relatively small plants. 
While rivals have tried for more than a decade to commercialize
DLE, their plans involved production volumes of 20,000 tons per
year or more at permanent facilities often in remote regions
where labor and supplies are difficult to procure.  
Houston-based IBAT designed and built a 450-foot-long (137
meter) portable plant in Louisiana that it moved in 13 parts to
the US Magnesium site, which draws brine from the Great Salt
Lake.
Additional plants can be added and stacked like Lego bricks to
boost production in 5,000-ton-per-year increments. It takes 18
months to build an IBAT plant and reach production, the company
said. 
    Each plant, which is smaller than three acres (1.2
hectares), is designed to move in the future to a new deposit
for reuse, saving construction costs. IBAT's plant costs $50
million to $60 million each, depending on several factors. 
Paris-based Eramet spent nearly $900 million on its own DLE
project that aims to come online this year in Argentina after
more than a decade of development.
    Ron Thayer, president of US Magnesium, said he chose IBAT's
process because of its portability as well as the type of
adsorption material that IBAT's process uses to filter lithium
from brine, which Burba developed. 
US Magnesium, which has started selling lithium produced with
IBAT's technology and paying IBAT a royalty, considered several
rival processes including one from Breakthrough Energy
Ventures-backed Lilac Solutions before settling on IBAT, he
added.
    "I consider (IBAT) a commercial lithium producer," Thayer
said    
Exxon Mobil  XOM.N , which is developing a lithium project in
Arkansas, has considered using IBAT's technology, Reuters has
reported.
IBAT's facility aims to recycle more than 98% of the water it
uses. Burba has repeatedly flagged the lithium industry's high
water use as a structural impediment to DLE
commercialization.    
That recyclability is key especially in Utah, where officials
last year tightened regulations on water extraction from the
Great Salt Lake that forced Compass Minerals  CMP.N  to abandon
its lithium plans.

 (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Veronica Brown and
Rod Nickel)
 ((ernest.scheyder@thomsonreuters.com; Twitter: @ErnestScheyder;
+1-713-210-8512; Reuters Messaging:
rm://ernest.scheyder.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net/))