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Standard Lithium taps Saltworks Technologies to build lithium plant in El Dorado

Posted on June 11, 2018

Saltworks Technologies has been selected by Standard Lithium to design and build a crystallization plant to make battery-grade lithium carbonate at a Union County facility.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Standard Lithium Ltd. said Wednesday that it has commissioned Saltworks Technologies Inc. to design and build a novel, selective crystallization plant to make battery-grade lithium carbonate in a continuous process in El Dorado.

The feedstock to the crystallization plant will be the high-purity lithium solution produced by the full-scale selective extraction pilot plant previously announced by the company on March 26.

The crystallization plant will be automated and will utilize machine-learning to optimize the crystallization conditions. The selective crystallization plant will be designed, built and tested in Vancouver and will then be deployed at the company’s pilot plant location in Union County.

The continuous selective crystallization plant is based on work conducted by Professor Jason Hein, a member of Standard Lithium’s Technical Advisory Committee, that has been demonstrated at bench scale to result in reproducible and high purity lithium carbonate crystallization.

Dr. Andy Robinson, COO and President of Standard Lithium commented "We’re extremely pleased to announce this agreement with Saltworks. We’ve been very impressed with the quality and technical sophistication of their team and the products that they design and manufacture.

“Standard Lithium is taking a parallel and risk-managed approach at our pilot-scale facility with respect to our final crystallization stage; our intention is to ‘future proof’ our final production options.

“In addition to our in-house technology testing, we will be sending high-purity lithium solutions to OEMs in order that they can use traditional, proven technologies to demonstrate production of lithium carbonate and hydroxide; however, we also wish to test whether modern approaches can provide a more efficient solution to making very high purity lithium carbonate.”

Saltworks CEO Benjamin Sparrow said that, “Lithium mining is water mining. Our team is very excited to provide Standard Lithium with an advanced water technology edge, leveraging our experience while working with their world class team.”