News

Construction has officially started on the United Downs Deep Geothermal Power (UDDGP) project of Geothermal Engineering Ltd. (GEL) in Cornwall, UK. The work on the power plant and lithium extraction plant is expected to be completed by the summer and power generation is planned by the end of 2024.

The French mining company Eramet and Électricité de Strasbourg (ÉS) have inaugurated a new pilot project for the direct extraction of lithium from geothermal brine at the Rittershoffen geothermal heat plant operated by ES in Eastern France.

"How to Shoulder EU Lithium Growth?" was the motto of the third LithiumDays, which took place in Halle from December 4 to 6, 2023. Over 100 participants followed the specialist presentations in person and online.

The annual meeting of the ISO TC 333 Lithium International Standard Technical Committee was held in Beijing at the beginning of December, attended by experts from 14 countries, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

The U.S. Department of Energy (US DOE) has published the results of a study done by the Lawrence Berkey National Laboratory quantifying the domestic lithium resources from the geothermal brine in the Salton Sea region in California.

In the UnLimited joint project, KIT is investigating not only manganese oxides but also other sorbents on a laboratory scale regarding direct lithium extraction from geothermal water. In this context, lithium iron phosphates LFP (LiFePO4) have been intensively tested in the laboratory and recently successfully applied.

The first test series for Li extraction using LMO have been successfully carried out at the UnLimited test site in Bruchsal (Upper Rhine Graben). Under the site-specific temperature and pressure conditions, it was shown that the extraction of lithium using the DLE process is technically possible. 

As part of the Li+Fluids joint project, BGR is testing for the first time a technical implementation for the extraction of lithium from deep geothermal brines in northern Germany. For this purpose, hot formation fluid from a depth of approx. 3,500 meters is to be brought to the surface and sorption processes are to be used to extract lithium.

Reported from France today, geothermal and lithium group Arverne, created by former oil companies to take advantage of geothermal energy, enters the stock market today. The company specializing in drilling hopes to boost the activities of its subsidiaries, from the production of lithium for batteries to geothermal energy for all.

Geothermal wells existing in the Upper Rhine Valley would allow for the reliable extraction of lithium for several decades without these sources running dry. This is the result of recent data analyses made by researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The results are reported in Energies.