News

Geothermal technology not only enables sustainable supply of electricity and heat, but also regional lithium extraction. Researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and EnBW have produced a lithium-ion sieve from a lithium-manganese oxide and used it to adsorb lithium from geothermal brines. In the future, the use of domestic lithium sources can help to meet the increasing demand for the light metal, which is indispensable as an energy storage material. The researchers reported in the Energy Advances journal.

UK-based mineral exploration company Cornish Lithium has been granted planning permission from the Cornwall Council to assess the potential for geothermal lithium production in the vicinity of the village of Blackwater in Cornwall, England. This follows the announcement of the plans for this project earlier this year.

On behalf of the Swiss Geological Survey swisstopo and the Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE, the FGS (Swiss Georesources Group - ETH Zurich) has presented a report. It presents international research on the potential extraction of critical raw materials from geothermal fluids.

Sourcing the European energy transition from domestic resources – vision or wishful thinking? This question will be addressed at the conference on 25 April 2023. Europe's security of raw material supply will be discussed in the context of its economically exploitable raw material potential and current geopolitics. It examines the existing and future framework conditions for mining projects and their downstream value chain (regulation, financing, permitting).

At the beginning of the year, the UnLimited research team started the first series of tests for lithium extraction at the Bruchsal site. Initially, a manganese-based adsorbent is being tested, which has already shown promising performance in the KIT laboratory tests.

DERA has published the results of its updated raw material risk assessment for lithium in a study. According to the study, demand for the raw material could increase by a factor of four to eight by 2030, while at the same time a massive supply deficit could arise.

Sorption and ion exchange have been examined as suitable direct lithium extraction (DLE) techniques. For the DLE technique, sorbents are needed that selectively bind lithium. Commercially available sorbents, however, have advantages and disadvantages in different processing lines and in dependence on the physicochemical parameters during extraction. In the joint UnLimited project, different sorbents beyond Mn-oxide are tested at lab scale, i.e., zeolite and Li-Fe-phosphate.

In the past weeks, the first interviews with stakeholders from industry, environmental associations and licensing authorities took place. The meetings were initiated by the UnLimited partner HYDROSION. The project partner provided information about the project and the current project status with the aim of demonstrating the regional opportunities of domestic lithium production from deep geothermal brines.

At the end of the year, the members of the two BMWK-funded research projects Li+Fluids and UnLimited met for an online expert discussion. The event focused on the presentation of the current activities of the individual partners and an outlook for the coming year 2023.

This year's annual event "Lithium Days" of the German Lithium Institute ITEL (Institute for Technologies and Economics of Lithium) was held in Leipzig from December 5 to 7. Besides numerous representatives from science, industry and politics, the two project partners EnBW and KIT of the research project UnLimited were also involved in the event.