Sounds promising. Some highlights below. It's scalable at a cost of $50-60mill per 5,000tpa. So a company like Phoenix could start with 20,000tpa for a cost of only $200-240mill. It only takes around 18 months to build and a company like Phoenix could skip its own pilot plant testing stage, potentially saving years and tens or possibly hundreds of millions of dollars trying to perfect its own extraction method. I'd guess more of this sort of thing will hit the market and no one tech will suit all deposits.
"The company, which developed its DLE plant to be portable, has essentially beaten Standard Lithium (SLI.V), opens new tab, SLB (SLB.N), opens new tab, Rio Tinto (RIO.AX), opens new tab, Eramet (ERMT.PA), opens new tab 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."
"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."
"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), opens new tab to abandon its lithium plans."
"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."
"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."
