In lithium industry first, IBAT commercializes new extraction technology
HOUSTON — In a milestone for the global clean-energy transition, International Battery Metals 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, SLB, Rio Tinto, Eramet 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 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.
