SWA Lithium, the Joint Venture (JV) between Equinor Energy AS (Stavanger, Norway) and Equinor ASA (Stavanger, Norway), which is developing the South West Arkansas Project (SWA), is pleased to announce that, in partnership with Koch Technology Solutions (KTS), it has successfully designed, built, commissioned, and is now operating, a pilot Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) plant at the South West Arkansas Project. The pilot DLE plant is processing brine directly from SWA to confirm engineering design parameters for the Project and provide samples of battery-quality lithium carbonate for use in the qualification process with potential off-take partners.
Standard Lithium’s Director and President, Dr. Andy Robinson commented: “The Standard Lithium and Equinor teams, along with our various engineering partners are working hard on the design for our first commercial lithium facility, which will be constructed in southwestern Arkansas in Lafayette and Columbia counties. To date, in order to support that design work, we have been using the huge amount of DLE and flowsheet performance data that we’ve collected at our demonstration plant, combined with testwork completed by KTS using our SWA Project brines. 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.”
“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. 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. This will serve two functions; first, it will provide us with lithium carbonate samples produced from the Project that we can use in negotiations with possible off-take partners and start the qualification process; second, it can also help the JV in selecting our preferred carbonate equipment vendor as we work through the design and partner evaluation process.
The success of this pilot DLE plant is due to the great support and collaboration we have with Mission Creek Resources LLC, and reflects our commitment to form close local partnerships and working relationships. We look forward to keeping our investors informed with data from this important derisking step, and continuing our work towards becoming the first new lithium-from-brine project in North America in over 50 years.”
Highlights of this field-based pilot include:
- The heart of the plant is the same KTS Li-Pro Lithium Selective Sorption (Li-Pro LSS) technology, as described in our recent news release (28 October 2024);
- Continued support and integration from the KTS team to allow full engineering design and optimization for the JV’s first commercial facility;
- Brine is being supplied from the JV’s IPC well, which provides a representative brine composition for the SWA Project;
- Brine supply and operation of the pilot DLE plant is ongoing and expected to continue until late-January 2025, at which point sufficient operational experience and design data will have been acquired;
- Concluding operation of the pilot, it is expected to produce approximately 1,000 gallons (3,785 liters) of concentrated and purified lithium chloride solution (6% LiCl solution);
- The 1,000 gallons of 6% LiCl solution will be sent off-site to three separate potential carbonate equipment vendors;
- The three vendors will produce, in total, approximately 30 kg of battery-quality lithium carbonate; and,
- The battery quality lithium carbonate produced will be used for the first phase(s) of qualification with potential off-take partners, and the performance of the vendors will be used to inform the JV with respect to vendor selection for the carbonate portion of the first commercial facility.