Standard Lithium and Equinor’s joint venture company SWA Lithium has started operations at its direct lithium extraction (DLE) pilot plant, advancing efforts toward its first commercial lithium facility in southwestern Arkansas.

The pilot DLE plant at the South West Arkansas Project is processing brine to confirm engineering design parameters and to provide samples of battery-quality lithium carbonate for use in the qualification process for potential offtakers, Standard Lithium said in a Dec. 19 news release. As part of the process, the JV is using Koch Technology Solutions’ Li-Pro Lithium Selective Sorption technology.

“This field-based pilot DLE plant is the final step in ensuring that we have exactly the right data to confirm our design and be sure that we know how our commercial plant will operate once constructed,” said Andy Robinson, director and president for Standard Lithium.

The work is underway as the U.S. takes steps to increase domestic supplies of lithium, a key ingredient in batteries used for electric vehicles and energy storage projects. There is currently only one lithium mine in the U.S.; however, several companies are pursuing projects that involve directly extracting lithium from brine.

Compared to traditional extraction techniques such as using solar evaporation of brine in large evaporation ponds or mining lithium-bearing rocks, DLE is considered more efficient and environmentally friendly.

“This pilot DLE plant is using real brine, collected in real-time from one of our project wells (the IPC well), and we are using the same flowsheet as our commercial lithium facility to produce an intermediate lithium chloride solution, the same as what we do every day in our demonstration plant,” Robinson said. “We’ll then ship this solution to several selected vendor partners so that they can convert the lithium chloride solution to a battery-quality lithium carbonate product.”

Standard said the brine supply and operation of the pilot plant is expected to continue until late January 2025. By that time, the company expects to have produced about 1,000 gallons of concentrated and purified lithium chloride solution to be sent to three potential carbonate equipment vendors. Those vendors, the company said, will together produce about 30 kg of battery-quality lithium carbonate to be used for the first phase of qualification with potential offtake partners.

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