EnergySource Minerals announced a new round of investment led by Schlumberger New Energy and TechMet Ltd. The Schlumberger New Energy investment includes a strategic partnership to accelerate the deployment of the ILiAD (Integrated Lithium Adsorption Desorption) lithium extraction (DLE) platform and integrate it into the front end of the process used by NeoLith Energy, a Schlumberger New Energy venture. (Earlier post.)

The platform has been piloted at demonstration scale for more than 6 years on a variety of real-world brines. Schlumberger will scale up testing at NeoLith Energy’s pilot plant in Nevada and deploy it at a global scale.

EnergySource Minerals developed the ILiAD technology for its lithium extraction operation at the John L. Featherstone Geothermal Power Plant in the Salton Sea.

Featherstone Geothermal Plant

ILiAD combines a superior lithium selective adsorbent with continuous bed processing to maximize lithium extraction from brines in a closed-loop environment, delivering disruptive reduction in time, cost, and environmental impact compared with alternative methods.

ILiAD is commercially ready to deploy today, reduces water footprint, does not consume reagents, demonstrates order-of-magnitude longer operating life, and highest lithium recovery rates. Pilot trials confirm monovalent and divalent removal rates of >99.5%, with more than 90% lithium recovery.

It also enables the development of new classes of brine resources for the production of additional minerals, such as manganese and zinc.

EnergySource Minerals has already engaged with multiple resource customers to evaluate and deploy the ILiAD technology platform worldwide. As a strategic investor and partner, Schlumberger New Energy is working closely with EnergySource Minerals in the industrialization and deployment of the platform.

Energy Source Minerals' technology shows great promise as an efficient, economical, and environmentally friendly solution for lithium extraction from brines. We are excited by the opportunities to scale up this solution to support the increased demand for lithium, motivated by the electric vehicle industry’s growth ambitions.

—Gavin Rennick, President of Schlumberger New Energy

EnergySource Minerals is a privately held company leading the development of Project ATLiS—a development initiative to extract and produce battery-spec lithium products utilizing geothermal brines from the Salton Sea geothermal resource area—as well as the ILiAD technology platform, which is being developed and deployed to lithium operations worldwide.