World’s Next Source of Lithium: Geothermal Plants

There’s lithium in that there geothermal well.

That, in a nutshell, is the business plan of Simbol Mining, one of the more novel start-ups in green tech I’ve seen all year. The company wants to commercialize a concept, pioneered at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, for extracting lithium from the liquid that flows inside geothermal systems. Simbol, and/or its geothermal partners, would then sell the lithium on the open market or to battery makers.

Mohr Davidow Ventures and Firelake Partners led a $6.7 million investment in the company. That money will fund prototypes to see how well the idea, which works in the lab, functions on a large scale.

It works as follows. In a geothermal well, hot brine is pumped from inside the earth up to a heat transfer mechanism. The subterranean heat, now embodied in steam, is used to turn a turbine and generate electricity. The liquid is then shuttled back underground, where it gets reheated and returns.

Simbol takes the cooled liquid and, before it goes back under, takes out the lithium through chemical and physical processes, says CEO Luka Erceg. In effect, Simbol is mining without the expense and environmental degradation of digging more holes.

“We think of it as zero-impact mining,” he said in an interview.

Lithium is a relatively common element (look where it is on the Periodic Table). Nonetheless, demand from battery makers has caused the price to skyrocket, he said. In 2002, lithium carbonate may have cost $2,500 a ton.  Now it sells for $6,500 to $7,000 and can cost more on the spot, or quick fix, market.

Conventional lithium mining also takes more time, land and equipment. Most of the world’s lithium now comes from Chile and Argentina. The metal is extracted from evaporation ponds filled with brine. Getting 25,000 tons of lithium carbonate (about 1/4th of the world’s annual demand) takes 10,000 acres. It can also be dug out of the ground.

Simbol will be able to do the same thing with 10 or so tractor-trailer sized storage sheds next to a geothermal well. “We intend to be the low cost producer,” Erceg said. There are questions, of course, like how much lithium can be extracted from geothermal plants. But it’s worth a shot.

Erceg added that the process may work with other types of metals and materials, but Simbol will concentrate first on lithium. The exact process has to be tailored to the local geothermal conditions, but overall the company expects that the method for getting lithium from one well will be somewhat similar to the method needed for other areas. (In a pinch, I suppose you could also hook it up to the water disposal systems at mental institutions too to get their leftover lithium.)

Simbol also underscores how the national labs have become more aggressive in taking their technologies commercial. The process started about four years ago. Steve Chu, who directs Lawrence Berkeley Labs, is a strong advocate for commercialization. Energy start-ups that rely on technology licensed from national labs include algae fuel maker LiveFuels and GreenVolts.

You don’t see many new wave mining companies these days, although more will likely emerge as a result of the commodities boom. The only other one I can think of is Nautilus Minerals. They are trying to mine precious metals in coastal waters off New Guinea. Maybe not as environmentally friendly.