Sustainable Lithium Demonstration Plant in Clayton Valley

Sustainable lithium production

Empowering the world’s transition to new energy sources

Overview

The growing battery-grade lithium demand

Nations and businesses around the world are clamoring to secure supplies of local battery-grade lithium. And that demand is only going to keep getting stronger, especially as the electric vehicle market continues to grow and more renewable but intermittent energy sources are added to the grid. SLB enables faster, more flexible, and more sustainable lithium extraction and production to help meet this growing demand.

Sustainable Lithium Production

Redefining the standard for sustainable lithium production to meet the energy demand of tomorrow.

Applications

An answer for your supply chain

With our surface and subsurface expertise, SLB offers a holistic, sustainable, and efficient solution that minimizes environmental impact. Using advanced direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology, natural resources management, and improved process systems, we can produce battery-grade lithium from brine in days instead of months. This allows the industry to more responsively adjust production based on demand and enables new opportunities for the production of lithium in regions across the globe where lithium-rich brine may be found.

How do we do it?

Integrated, innovative technologies enable lithium extraction directly and continuously from brine which is then purified and concentrated at the surface in a controlled, closed environment: First the lithium-rich brine is pumped from the subsurface, pretreated to optimize it for direct lithium extraction (DLE), and then passed through DLE columns to isolate the lithium. Freshwater is then used to release the lithium from the columns. The lithium-water mixture is then treated to remove impurities and desalinated to further concentrate the lithium. From there, the lithium is refined on site into battery-grade lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide.

Benefits

Less production time

Cuts lithium production time down from over a year to just hours

Minimal environmental footprint

Utilizes less than 10% of the land footprint of traditional methods, reducing the physical impact to ecosystems and communities

Sustainable water resource management

Reduces water consumption by up to 95% compared with traditional methods: Spent brine is reinjected (after thorough testing) to minimize impact in high water stress and other sensitive environments

More lithium

Consistently delivers a 85%–95% recovery rate, with up to 96% recovery from a 200-ppm brine as proven in our Clayton Valley project in Nevada.

Features

An experienced partner you can trust

SLB understands what it takes to test, develop, implement, and operate a new DLE-based production facility. At our demonstration plant in Clayton Valley, Nevada, we embarked on a full-scale project journey that took us from exploration and subsurface model building, front-end engineering and design (FEED), and permitting to DLE, concentration, and conversion technologies integration, construction, and operation.

We learned a lot during this time and are eager to apply our knowledge and experience to your DLE project to electrify the energy transition.

Graphic of the workflow of lithium production from subsurface engineering to lithium conversion.

We accelerate the scaling of lithium production while using less land, water, energy, and chemicals. Let us help you maximize lithium production efficiency while minimizing environmental footprint.