Translation of entire article via Google Translate: David Snydacker Interview:Entitled: American startup pilots new methodology to extract lithium in ChileDavid Snydacker founded Lilac, a startup that promises to make lithium extraction through ion separation more efficient and sustainable. They have operations in Argentina and the US; and this week - just as the government unveiled the national strategy - they started a pilot in northern Chile.
Body: David Snydacker had a musical group: he was the drummer for Red Wire Black Wire, they released two albums and played in more than 30 cities in the United States, Canada and Russia. In 2010 he left the drumsticks and traded them for books and pipettes. He entered his PhD at Northwestern (Chicago) to study materials engineering and battery technology.There, he directed the R&D strategy for materials for lithium batteries, wrote five papers and dedicated himself to developing seminars for researchers on these topics. In 2016, after finishing his studies, he thought about what to do. Its main goal was to address the biggest bottleneck facing the electric vehicle industry, lithium supply.That year Lilac was born. “In recent years, as car companies have invested tens of billions of dollars in battery factories, the price of lithium has become very volatile, and that is raising concerns about lithium supplies.
In the last ten years, 90% of the new projects for this mineral have been hard rock projects, especially in places like Western Australia, where the hard rock is extracted from the ground and from large open pit mines,” says Snydacker. They opened a small lab in Berkeley, California, and development began. His thesis was that lithium was being extracted from hard rock, and there would not be enough for the demand in the coming years, and on the other hand that most of the world's reserves are found in brines (natural salt water deposits) and The conventional process to extract lithium through this method (which is the one implemented in Chile) "involves generating large evaporation ponds, which damage the environment, it is a slow initial process and is susceptible to weather."the selective pearl ( subtitle)With this background, they developed an ion exchange technology to increase lithium production in brines without the need for evaporation ponds. They ensure that this method protects the environment (it needs less water) and is more efficient.By the end of 2017 they had already established the basic performance of their technology, and by 2019 it was already perfected: “We had shown that we can perform more than a thousand lithium absorption cycles before having to replace the beads, which is the critical durability of the materials required for this technology. And then, since 2019, we have been focused on manufacturing at scale and developing projects with our partners.”
The CEO explains that each ion exchange technology is based on a small bead that is selective for certain metals. “Now these have been developed for uranium extraction or for water softening, which is the removal of calcium from tap water. But an ion exchange bead for lithium extraction has never been successfully developed. Lilac has done it for the first time”, he assures.One of the great challenges is to develop a pearl that can do two things. One, have a very high selectivity for lithium, so that it absorbs the lithium while the other impurities pass through. And the other is durability, so that it can absorb and release lithium many times before those beads need to be replaced. “So we have developed a new ion exchange bead that can do this for lithium and is economically viable for the first time. We have also developed a complete technological package. Not only the ion exchange beads, but also the process equipment in which these beads are loaded”, they assure in Lilac.nvestment by Bill Gates and link with ChileTo date Lilac has raised more than US$180 million; Series B, closed in 2021, was US$ 150 and included SK Materials (South Korea, BMW i Ventures, Presidio Ventures (a Sumitomo Corporation Group company), MCJ Collective (climatech fund) and Earthshot Ventures (Silicon VAlley) Previously, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund linked to Bill Gates, had been the first to bet on them.
Dave Danielson, who was responsible for Gates' investment, was a part-time professor at Stanford. In 2019, while the former UDI deputy with a double degree on that campus, Felipe de Mussy, was studying, the teacher invited Snydacker to give a talk. There they met and they added him as a member of the board of directors. Upon finishing his studies, De Mussy took over as the company's president for South America.It may interest you: The back room and loose ends left by the lawsuit against Dominga's partnersSince the period of its foundation, they assure that they have grown by 10 every year, and now they have a commercial team to scale the business. Headquartered in Oakland, California, with offices in Chile, Argentina, Australia and 200 employees around the world, Lilac seeks to be the leader in the industry.
They are in advanced stages in more than 10 projects around the world(two pilots have already finished in the United States), including Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, the United States and Europe.One of these is in Kachi, in the neighboring country. They have just increased their stake from 10% to 20% with an on-site plant, which they say marks the first successful use of ion exchange for lithium production in South America and "unlocks the commercial development of the large new lithium supply." of the Kachi brine project in Argentina”.On their website they highlight that the 2,500 kg of LCE (lithium carbonate equivalents) were extracted in Kachi with 80% lithium recovery, 90% plant uptime, 1,000 times less land compared to the evaporation ponds and 10 times less water compared to conventional aluminum-based absorbents.They say that when Lake Resources (partners in this operation) and Lilac fully develop it, the Kachi project is expected to produce 50,000 tons of lithium for batteries per year.These days they are starting a pilot in the north of Chile, and in the coming weeks they will announce the company with which they will collaborate.
Snydacker says that historically bringing a lithium brine project online takes 10 years, and with his technology it takes four; In the conventional process, ten thousand hectares are required and 40% of the lithium is recovered, while with them they only need ten hectares and 80% is recovered, and they also use ten times less amount of fresh water.They say “Lilac production costs for low concentration resources are comparable to the production costs of evaporation ponds in high concentration resources. When you consider the cost of starting production in new resources with significantly lower lithium concentrations than in the Salar de Atacama, Lilac's technology is significantly cheaper than conventional methods."And the CEO adds that “one of the biggest difficulties we have faced has been educating the lithium industry about the very low consumption of fresh water of our ion exchange technology, since many people have only heard of the very high consumption of water associated with the old Del technologies (Direct Lithium Extraction) based on aluminum absorbents”.
They emphasize that the Atacama salt flat is the Ferrari of extraction, but the difficulty lies in obtaining this material in places where the concentration is lower, and this technology would be the one that generates this possibility in all the brines where there is less concentration. This year they will have their production plant in Nevada ready.“We have a tremendous amount of evidence and data to support our technology. We have completed more than 200,000 hours of operations with more than 60 companies around the world”, concludes the CEO.On the national lithium strategy: "You may like it more or less, but we are going to have rules"Regarding President Boric's announcement last week, in which he said that the State will manage the projects, the executives of the North American company have an opinion: "Currently the lithium belongs to the State of Chile, so I do not agree with the headline of the international newspaper saying that Chile is going to nationalize lithium, because it already belongs to the State. And I think the big question here is how, for the first time, are we going to have rules? You may like it more or less, but we are going to have rules. Most of it is how Chile wants to develop with new technologies”.
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