Cornish Lithium Ltd has completed construction of its geothermal water test site and installation of its first demonstration plant at United Downs, Cornwall.
Founder and chief executive Jeremy Wrathall said that the results from test work at the site would inform the development of a larger pilot plant expected to be built by the end of March 2022.
WATER TEST SITE
The site will trial a number of DLE [direct lithium extraction] technologies on both deep and shallow geothermal waters.
The former is delivered by GeoCubed in collaboration with Geothermal Engineering Ltd; the latter will be from Cornish Lithium’s research boreholes.
The test work aims to establish which of the technologies is most suited to low-carbon extraction of lithium from Cornish geothermal waters.
The test site includes DLE technology demonstration plants; borehole pumping infrastructure; demonstration lithium extraction circuit; a core shed housing 2,000 metres of drilling core recovered to date; bulk fluid storage for the geothermal water samples to be tested; and a field laboratory for initial analysis of samples.
There is also a visitor centre and offices for the project team.
TECHNOLOGY PROVIDERS
Cornish Lithium will demonstrate low-carbon DLE technologies from geothermal waters using technology from Geolith and Precision Periodic.
Geolith specialises in delivering sustainable lithium extraction solutions. The company utilises microfibre-based materials with selective absorption properties to ‘filter’ selectively captured lithium or unwanted contaminants.
The Geolith demonstration plant is expected to be in operation for three weeks from this Wednesday (9 June).
Precision Periodic’s proprietary Nano Beads™ filtration media is designed to extract and concentrate lithium ions without the need for pre-treatment, heat or pressure.
The process is expected to generate zero waste with geothermal waters returned to the source (once lithium ions have been extracted), or filtered with additional Nano Beads.
These will clean the geothermal waters of other elements that could potentially produce water for other applications such as farming.
The system is designed to be highly scalable and requires very little energy. Their low-carbon, small footprint is ideal for locating processing equipment at each individual site.