https://unauthorised investment advice/resources/notorious-dle-the-lithium-extr...

https://unauthorised investment advice/resources/notorious-dle-the-lithium-extraction-technologies-gunning-for-the-crown/

• In the rapidly changing world of lithium production, emerging DLE technologies are poised to change the way the critical commodity is produced
• Here are some of the different technologies being explored and the ASX companies delving in

The strong demand and significant investment in lithium over the past few years has driven a wave of direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies, designed to maximise the potential of lithium projects.

As it stands, the world is facing a lithium supply crunch that will see demand rising from 500,000t of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) in 2021 to 4Mt in 2030.

To help meet the shortfall, producers, miners and service providers are turning to a range of different DLE technologies to produce cheaper, higher quality, and more environmentally friendly lithium by tapping salty brine deposits that the US Geological Survey estimates to contain roughly 70% of the world’s lithium reserves.

Instead of concentrating lithium by evaporating brine in large pools, DLE technologies aim to extract about 90% or more lithium through different methods, the most common of these being sorption (also known as adsorption), ion exchange, and solvent extraction.

Different DLE technologies boast different market readiness. Pic via Fastmarkets

While many of these DLE technologies are so far unproven, adsorption-DLE has a 50-year development and implementation history with the technology being used at commercial scale by global top three lithium producer, Livent, for 26 years at the Fenix lithium mine in the Salar del Hombre Muerto in Argentina, South America.

Livent, set to merge withAllkem (ASX:AKE)later this year, is currently in the process ofincreasing lithium carbonate productionby over 400% at Fenix.

It developed its adsorbent DLE tech in-house during the 1990s based on intellectual property adapted from Dow Chemical.

Their sorbent is used to extract lithium chloride from brine before evaporation ponds remove water from the lithium concentrate produced by the DLE process.

Lithium is then shipped to Livent’s chemical plant for conversion into other lithium chemicals.