\u00a9 shutterstock\/Fahroni<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCan you provide more detail on your key projects and your partners?<\/h3>\n We are currently working with multiple oil and gas and lithium mining companies. Our oil and gas partners are active in western Canada and their brine assets have less than 50 ppm of lithium, which is far less than the South American salars.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, our process has shown remarkable performance by extracting more than 95% of the lithium and concentrating it at bench and lab pilot scales. We achieved this performance without much pretreatment, which lowers our operating costs and shortens the processing time.<\/p>\n
The results have been shared with the partner and the next step for us is to process their brine on a much larger scale with an eye on commercial demonstration plant operation in the next two years.<\/p>\n
Candle Lithium also has agreements in place with two lithium project developers in the United States, one of which is Morella Corporation, based out of Perth, Australia. Morella\u2019s Fish Lake Valley project is located in Nevada, and we have been working on it since 2021.<\/p>\n
The technology has been tested on their brine collected from different depths multiple times and we have achieved excellent lithium recovery and selectivity. Morella and Candle are exploring the pathway to pilot the technology on Morella\u2019s brine.<\/p>\n
In addition to these projects, we continue to hold conversations with brine project developers and oil and gas companies.<\/p>\n
What needs to be done to ensure a reliable, sustainable supply of lithium?<\/h3>\n For many years, China has had a stronghold on lithium refining and its exports to the rest of the world. The demand growth for its use in electric cars has spurred Canadian and US governments to list lithium as a strategic mineral, and we have witnessed significant support for the domestic production of lithium in North America.<\/p>\n
However, hard rock mining projects are typically capital intensive and clay projects are rather new in the lithium industry, and they both require significant upfront capital cost. Unconventional brine resources, on the other hand, are rather abundant in North America and their chemistry and origin are well understood and documented. In many areas, brine is already being produced as part of oil and gas production and it is reinjected as a waste stream.<\/p>\n
With the right technology these projects can come online much faster than hard rock or clay projects. The bottleneck for lithium production from these resources has been the lack of an economically viable technology to extract and produce lithium.<\/p>\n
We believe more public and private sector support should be allocated to develop Direct Lithium Extraction technologies to accelerate their development and commercialisation.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the regulatory framework associated with the development of brine-hosted minerals is still evolving in different jurisdictions, and more attention from regulatory bodies is required to develop clear policies and regulations.<\/p>\n
What does the future hold for Candle Lithium and the lithium market in general?<\/h3>\n Candle Lithium has an exciting plan for 2024 to build and operate our pilot plant in Alberta, which is a critical step towards the commercialisation of our technology in the following years. In parallel, we are discussing commercial demonstration plant installation on one of our partners\u2019 sites.<\/p>\n
Since Candle\u2019s process can be a bolt-on technology to existing oil and gas facilities, our deployment time will be short with lower initial capital investment. We anticipate to be commercially producing lithium from oil and gas produced water by 2026 and expanding our projects rapidly in North America, which is well aligned with the demand growth in the lithium market.<\/p>\n
Of course, there will be more players in this space as other technologies will become more refined and mature making the space more competitive, which is good for the lithium industry in general.<\/p>\n
Despite the decline in lithium carbonate prices in places like China and recent studies on alternative batteries, we have seen more investment in lithium space, and the appetite for lithium has not faded away. Most experts predict that lithium will remain the dominant battery material for many years to come and continue to play a central role in the EV revolution.<\/p>\n
Please note, this article will also appear in the sixteenth edition of our\u00a0quarterly publication<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Candle Lithium Corporation is using its expertise and experience to advance and support Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) in North America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":38473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24502],"tags":[529,24206,24555,24527],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Advancing Direct Lithium Extraction in North America<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n