Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) has announced that it has engaged Aquatech as its technology partner to deliver the engineering and process plants for the conversion of lithium chloride intermediate product to battery-grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate at the company’s Stage 1 Lithium Hydroxide Facility in Hell’s Kitchen, California. Aquatech is a recognized global leader in end-to-end process solutions to produce technical and battery-grade lithium hydroxide, lithium carbonate, and lithium salts.
Aquatech will utilize a high-purity lithium chloride ‘eluate’ recovered via Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) from CTR’s geothermal lithium brine resource. The production plant will include multiple process plants that integrate advanced membrane, evaporation, and crystallization technology for the production of refined crystalline lithium hydroxide monohydrate product.
CTR’s Hell’s Kitchen project, located in Imperial County, California, has a projected resource capacity to produce 1,100MW of baseload renewable power and an estimated 300,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) products each year – enough to support the production of over 5 million standard-sized electric vehicles annually.
CTR and its technology partners recently completed a US$ 60 million brine optimization program that operated for six months from November 2022 until April 2023. The company’s engineering team improved several process stages, including optimization of the brine preparation unit to efficiently recover a high-purity lithium chloride ‘eluate’.
The optimization plant, which operated at a steady state for approximately 3,000 hours, was constructed at a 1/10th commercial scale. The Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) unit achieved a 95-97% lithium recovery rate. CTR will utilize Aquatech’s innovative process technology for the final lithium conversion and purification process stage.
CTR had also recently signed a a Memorandum of Understanding with Fuji Electric Corp. of America (FEA) to complete multiple Equipment, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contracts for the Hell’s Kitchen project.