Mining company Cornish Lithium is moving ahead with its plans for a £4 million pilot plant to extract the valuable metal from underground hot rock water, and GeoCubed, a joint venture with Geothermal Engineering Limited (GEL), has announced that GeoLoth SAS will be providing its Li-Capt Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technology.
International Mining reports that the pilot plant is scheduled to be commissioned at United Downs in Cornwall at the end of March 2022, and has been supported by the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership with £2.9 million from the UK Government’s Getting Building Fund.
Following a selection process, GeoLith’s technology was selected due to the quality of its tender, the effectiveness of the technology, and its ability to design and deliver a pilot plant.
The pilot plant aims to process the 140 cubic metres of deep geothermal water that was successfully obtained by GEL during recent testing at United Downs and will confirm that lithium can be produced in the region from geothermal brine.
The pilot plant plans to have a nominal capacity of 10 tonnes of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent per year, and the results from the pilot scheme are expected to provide enough information to allow for the design of a commercial lithium plant in Cornwall.
Jeremy Wrathall, chief executive and founder of Cornish Lithium and a director of GeoCubed, said: “We are delighted to announce that GeoCubed has selected GeoLith’s Li-Capt technology for use in this pilot plant.”
He added that Cornish Lithium has a good working relationship with GeoLith and that the pilot plant will enable testing of the DLE technology on the shallow geothermal waters, and demonstrate what modern, low-carbon mineral extraction will look like.
Ryan Law, managing director and founder of GEL and a director of GeoCubed, said: “The recent geothermal tests at our United Downs site have proved that geothermal power can be produced in Cornwall. The appointment of GeoLith is also a great step forward for geothermal lithium production in the UK.”
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