Bad news for Vulcan? Was Tim Murray right after all?
KIT has published a new open access study onlithium extraction:
https://www.geothermie.de/aktuelles/nachrichten/news-anzeigen/news/herausforderungen-und-chancen-fuer-die-lithiumgewinnung-aus-geothermalen-systemen-in-deutschland.html
Excerpts translated:
„The current state of the art showsearly to intermediate technology maturity for lithium extractionefficiencies in laboratory experiments of 50-90%. Under thedisproportionately higher challenges of running a geothermal powerplant, extraction efficiencies in the lower end of this range areconsidered realistic.“
„Grant ... emphasises, for example,that a simple transfer of findings from one plant to other sites isnot possible without restrictions due to different thermal watercompositions. ... The extraction efficiencies achieved in thelaboratory were 50-90 % under ideal conditions with sometimes verylong residence times. Since the demands on material, technology andvolume capacity of the reactors are incomparably higher in ongoingplant operation with real water and high flow rates, comparably highefficiencies cannot be expected.“
„It is not certain whether the sameextraction efficiencies as under laboratory conditions can also beachieved on an industrial scale. In view of the current state of theart, no precise statement can be made about the extraction costs.“
„The origin of lithium and a modelfor fluid genesis are elementary, but are still part of activeresearch for fluids in Germany.“
„In this context, the aspect of apossible "lithium supply" as a result of water-rockinteraction in the reservoir remains unresolved. Due to the lack ofactive extraction, there is no in-situ experience in this regard sofar.“
„However, a rapid expansion of thepossible lithium extraction from thermal waters appears difficult dueto the lead times for the construction of geothermal power plants.Due to the necessary times for exploration and approval procedures upto the construction and operation of a geothermal power plant, thelead time is about 5-8 years ... Since existing power plants can onlyincrease their flow rates to a limited extent due to reservoirhydraulics, new deep boreholes and geothermal power plants representthe greatest leverage for relevant lithium production from thermalwaters in Germany.“
„Scaling up a plant requires muchmore detail than previous prototypes, which usually leads tounforeseen complications and a sharp increase in costs and effort ...The costs for this step usually consume the same to more than doublethe investment as reaching all previous maturity levels together ...The subsequent construction and implementation of the first realindustrial plant (TRL 8) again requires 5-10 times the amount of allprevious steps, depending on the technology ... Due to these stillmissing development steps, it is not yet possible, according to thecurrent state of knowledge, to determine exactly how great theextraction efficiency will really be in a later continuous extractionoperation and what costs can be expected for this.“
Translated withwww.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
(20min delay)