Georit Energy Selected as First Partner by Global Company for 'Lithium Extraction from Wastewater'

Georit Energy, which is promoting a lithium direct extraction (DLE) project from lithium wastewater, has confirmed a global secondary battery material company as the first pilot plant installation company.

According to Georit Energy on the 2nd, the company is conducting demonstration work after installing a pilot plant applying DLE technology at a global secondary battery material company located in Chungcheongnam-do. The company has conducted lithium extraction work twice, from high-concentration and low-concentration lithium wastewater, respectively.

The first high-concentration lithium wastewater test concentrated lithium wastewater containing 880 ppm lithium concentration up to 8,800 ppm, and the second low-concentration lithium wastewater test succeeded in concentrating 220 ppm lithium wastewater up to 5,400 ppm. Both concentrated solutions showed a final lithium recovery rate of 95%. The company has requested evaluation from an external accredited institution regarding the exact test results.

A Georit Energy official said, "The technology of our affiliate, ExtraLith, has proven to be excellent in extracting lithium from a wide range of wastewater regardless of lithium concentration," adding, "We plan to share the evaluation results from external institutions with related manufacturers as soon as they are available."

Georit Energy is inviting ExtraLith’s technical staff to Korea to focus on pilot plant sales and technical demonstrations. This is to increase understanding of the ion exchange method-based DLE technology and raise expectations for actual commercialization to achieve rapid results. In particular, the company stated that after constructing multiple pilot plants in a short period, they will work with researchers to find optimized conditions for the lithium extraction process depending on lithium concentration and impurities present in the wastewater.

A company representative said, "Since the concentration and impurities vary for each lithium wastewater, we are accumulating as much data as possible to create conditions that maximize lithium recovery rate," and added, "In addition to this secondary battery material company, we are discussing pilot plant construction with multiple companies."

He continued, "After demonstration and verification, we aim to directly install and operate a commercialization-purpose plant within the manufacturer’s site within this year," explaining, "Once commercialized, secondary battery material companies can recover losses of input raw materials and increase production yield, so discussions on pilot plant construction are progressing rapidly."