So, Livent and others do not use pre-evaporation ponds and...

So, Livent and others do not use pre-evaporation ponds and evaporation ponds, but use _Direct_ Lithium Extraction? Is that why they are investing 400m+ USD in traditional non DLE processing of brine?

Of course everybody is evaluating DLE, but nobody has proven it to work on a commerical scale at sufficient low cost. It is simply unproven.

Doesn't mean it can't be done, who knows, there is certainly money being spend researching it (not by Vulcan by the way), but just presenting it as if this a off the shelf derisked process is flawed.

If it works, they money is in the ownership of the process/IP, not in the resource. Because lithium is not scarce, to produce it a sufficient low cost and quality is difficult. Therefore a few are building test plants (that even specialist like Livent will take a year or more to research and build, even though they are using it for years already as is claimed.... ). So why does Vulcan only focus on resource, and just passes by on process/IP? Because that is the bottleneck, not the resource. Once DLE is proven to work, the world will be in total awash of Lithium - although it will still require quite a lot of know how to get it to the correct quality - it remains a speciality chemical.

As far as I know Vulcan has no IP and no knowledge in this field, all is hired externally (even though they present it as if they have internal expertise). And most of chatter on DLE comes from that one source. They are quite good in marketing, I'll admit that. I am curious whether how they will test at the Berlin conference though. That is not retail they are preaching to over there.