Weardale Lithium has announced that the company has successful extracted lithium carbonate from geothermal brine at a former cement works site at County Durham, UK. The brine was came from from existing boreholes near Eastgate.

Lithium carbonate was extracted from the brine using a low-impact, low-carbon, and low-water usage method. The technology used for extract was provided by Manchester-based Watercycle Technologies, which is also involved in another geothermal lithium project in the Lazio region of Italy. The company claims that their extraction solution requires 95% less land than the conventional lithium extraction processes.

Weardale Lithium touted the achievement as a major milestone in creating a domestic supply of lithium in England by providing that the geothermal brine was viable for lithium extraction and would allow the company to proceed with scale-up trials. The company is aiming to eventually generate 10,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate annually and claims it will be able to create 125 full-time, highly skilled jobs in the region. It is hoping to build a pilot-demonstration facility to test commercial scale production of the material.

“We have taken a significant step forward in establishing that the naturally occurring geothermal brines are amenable for lithium production and validated a number of direct lithium extraction processes,” said Stewart Dickson, CEO of Weardale Lithium. “We will now accelerate and scale-up the testing of increased volumes of brine towards first production.”

Weardale’s work has been made possible through funding from the government’s Automotive Transformation Fund, awarded by the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC).

“Projects such as this are vital in securing upstream supply to support the UK’s forecast demand of over 97GWh of automotive batteries by 2030, and could support a significant proportion of the forecast 57,000tonnes per annum of UK lithium carbonate needs by that time,” said Julian Hetherington, Director of automotive transportation at the APC.