New Approaches to Cost-Effective Lithium Extraction from High Salinity Brine

OVERVIEW

The Seeker for this Wazoku Crowd Challenge is looking for an efficient and cost-effective process to purify lithium from high-salinity brines.

Due to its physical and chemical properties, lithium (Li) has become an essential component in manufacturing many high-tech products, including electric vehicles and consumer electronics. This places a great pressure on the Li supplies chain, which will only increase in the future.

Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technology is a key technology to enable selective extraction of lithium from brine. Many different technologies have been developed, including adsorption, membrane, electrochemical processes, but only adsorption based DLE has been commercialized. However, the post-DLE processes involve multiple process steps for purification and refinement to manufacture final lithium products (lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide) for battery application.

The goal of this Challenge is to find new approaches for Li extraction from high-salinity brines that will be more cost-effective, while meeting the purity level for battery grade lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide

By taking part in this Prize Challenge, you are granting the Seeker a right to use your submitted information; however, the Seeker must determine award winners within 45 days from the start of evaluation, otherwise they lose this right.

This Prize Challenge requires a written proposal to be submitted. There is a guaranteed award pool of $30,000, with at least one award of $15,000 or larger and no award being smaller than $5,000. Award distribution (or allocation) will be contingent upon the theoretical evaluation of the proposals. 

In this Prize Challenge, Solvers may:

• Submit ideas of their own.
• Submit third-party information that they have the right to use and further, the authority to convey to the Seeker this right with the right to use and develop derivative works.
• Submit information considered in the public domain without any limitations on use.

Submissions to this Challenge must be received by 11:59 PM (US Eastern Time) on September 30th, 2024.

- Login and register your interest to start solving!

Find out more about participation in Wazoku Crowd Challenges.

THE CHALLENGE

Background

Due to its light weight and high-energy density, lithium (Li) has become a material of choice for rechargeable batteries that power multiple devices: from smartphones to laptops to cameras. Besides, Li plays a vital role in electric vehicles and energy storage systems, offering a clean alternative to fossil fuels.

The demand for Li is expected to surge in coming years fueled by the transition towards electric vehicles and the increasing reliance on portable electronics. Moreover, the growing focus on renewable energy sources is driving the need for efficient energy storage solutions, placing even greater pressure on Li supplies.

All this points to the urgent need to design more efficient and cost-effective technologies for Li extraction from natural sources.  

Currently, one of the main natural sources of Li are brines which are solutions that have a total dissolved solids concentration much higher than seawater. For example, a brine that the Seeker of this Challenge is using for Li extraction typically contains 100-500 ppm Li ions along with 100,000+ ppm impurities such as Ca, Na, Mg, and K ions. Generally, the total dissolved solids in the brines are around 20-30 wt.%.

To extract Li from this brine, the current commercial adsorption based DLE process includes the following steps,

1. Brine pretreatment as needed
2. The pretreated brine is passed through adsorption DLE
3. DLE eluate goes through a mix of membrane, ion exchange, evaporation to remove impurities and water
4. The concentrated/purified product goes through conversion/crystallization to finally produce battery grade lithium carbonate.

Adsorption DLE allows selective extraction of Li, but its product still contains impurities and high concentration of water, which requires multiple post processing steps for purification/concentration and finally to obtain battery grade Li products. This contributes to the major cost of overall manufacturing process. A novel DLE should enable substantial reduction of the downstream processing.

The seeker is looking for solutions that can offer cost of production (including both CAPEX/OPEX) for DLE and all downstream process steps to be $10,000 or lower per ton of LCE (Lithium Carbonate Equivalent).

The Challenge

The goal of this Challenge is therefore to find new, efficient and cost-effective approaches to Li extraction from high-salinity brines.

We envision that a new process can be designed that would reduce the cost of production (CAPEX + OPEX) of one ton of LCE at $10,000 or lower while keeping the purity of the final product above 99.5%.

We anticipate that the major cost saving could be achieved by having a novel DLE process that enables reduction, minimization or removal of further purification and concentration steps in the downstream. However, we’d be ready to consider any other improvement to the process that can optimize it by, for example, reducing the total number of steps.

Of note: we’re familiar with a variant of the DLE process that uses membranes instead of adsorbent to separate Li from some impurities like divalent ions, e.g. Mg. However, in our experience, this option has a challenge of running high salinity feed and is not selective enough to remove monovalent ions. Electrochemical membrane technologies are being developed by others, but scalability is challenging.

SOLUTION REQUIREMENTS

We’re open to any innovative approach for as long as the proposed process meets the following Solution Requirements:

1. The proposed process will ultimately enable to produce lithium product (lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide) at the cost competitive or lower than the current brine lithium production cost. Solution with preliminary technoeconomic analysis is preferred, but not required.
2. The proposed process will be able to keep the purity of the final Li product above 99.5% with over 90% recovery
3. The proposed process will be potentially scalable to 10,000s tons of LCE per year.
4. The proposed process will consist of a minimal number of process steps, or enable to skip many of purification process steps. The fewer steps, the cheaper it would likely be to manufacture final lithium products.
5. The proposed process will be completely safe to operate and environmentally friendly.

At the same time, we’re not going to accept solutions that:

• Involve complicated and costly downstream processing steps
• Are based on very early-stage, unproven technologies that will take years to validate and implement.
• Require custom-made, sophisticated equipment not easily available in on-the-ground settings.
• Require significant freshwater consumption or have potential for higher environmental footprints.

Solutions with any Technology Readiness Level (TRL) are invited, although those with TRL 4+ are preferred.  

This Prize Challenge has the following features:

1. By taking part in this Prize Challenge, you are granting the Seeker a right to use your submitted information; however, the Seeker must determine the award winners within 45 days from the start of evaluation, otherwise the Seeker loses this right. You will receive notification.
2. There is a guaranteed award of $30,000, with at least one award being no smaller than $15,000 and no award being smaller than $5,000.
3. The award distribution will be determined after theoretical evaluation of the proposals by the Seeker.
4. Solvers may:

• Submit ideas of their own
• Submit third-party information that they have the right to use and further, the authority to convey to the Seeker this right with the right to use and develop derivative works,
• Submit information considered in the public domain without any limitations on use.

5. The Seeker may also issue “Honourable Mention” recognitions for notable submissions that are not selected for monetary awards.
6. The Seeker may wish to partner with the Solver at the conclusion of the Challenge. Please indicate your interest in partnering.

YOUR SUBMISSION

Please login and register your interest, to complete the submission form.

The submitted proposals must be written in English, and in your submission form response and attachments, you should include:

1. Participation type – you will first be asked to inform us how you are participating in this challenge, as a Solver (Individual) or Solver (Organization).
2. Solution Level - the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of your solution.
3. Partnering - there may be an opportunity to partner at the conclusion of this Challenge. Please indicate if partnering is of interest to you.
4. Problem & Opportunity - highlight the innovation in your approach to the Problem, its point of difference, and the specific advantages/benefits this brings (up to 500 words).
5. Solution Overview - detail the features of your solution and how they address the Solution Requirements (500 words, there is space to add more in the summary field below, and to add any appropriate supporting data, diagrams, etc.).
6. Experience - Expertise, use cases and skills you or your organization have in relation to your proposed solution (up to 500 words).
7. Solution Risks - any risks you see with your solution and how you would plan for this (up to 500 words).
8. Timeline, capability and costs - describe what you think is required to deliver the solution, estimated time and cost (up to 500 words).
9. Online References - provide links to any publications, articles or press releases of relevance (up to 500 words).

Wazoku encourages the use by Solvers of AI approaches to help develop their submissions, though any produced solely with generative AI are not of interest.

Find out more about participation in Wazoku Crowd Challenges.

Submissions to this Challenge must be received by 11:59 PM (US Eastern Time) on September 30th, 2024.

Late submissions will not be considered.

Your submission will be evaluated by the evaluation team first reviewing the information and content you have submitted on the submission form, with attachments used as additional context to your form submission. Submissions relying solely on attachments will receive less attention from the evaluation team.

After the Challenge submission due date, the Seeker will complete the review process and make a decision with regards to the winning solution(s) according to the timeline in the Challenge header. All Solvers who submit a proposal will be notified about the status of their submissions.