Battery grade lithium carbonate produced from central Italy brine
(23 April 2024, Manchester UK) - Watercycle Technologies Ltd (‘Watercycle’ or ‘WT’), a UK-based climate tech company specialising in critical minerals recovery, has successfully extracted lithium to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate from geothermal brines. The brines were synthesised from those previously analysed at the Lazio projects of Altamin Limited AZI:ASX (‘Altamin’), an Australian publicly listed mineral exploration company. The finalisation of this laboratory testing is part of a wider collaborative project assessing historical well data and market opportunity for lithium extraction in Italy.
Watercycle has deployed its proprietary Direct Lithium Extraction and Crystallisation (DLEC™) technology to process brines representing the range of compositions from two geothermal wells from the Lazio, a province of central Italy, to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate. The two synthesised brines were treated to further validate Watercycle’s DLEC™ process on brines of varied nature and composition. This is a significant milestone in the utilization of DLEC™ beyond the UK and marks Watercycle’s contribution to Europe’s critical mineral strategic autonomy agenda.
Watercycle’s co-founder and CEO, Dr Seb Leaper said: “It’s fantastic to be working with Altamin and to have produced battery-grade lithium carbonate from two of their brines, representing the range of lithium concentrations present. The potential for Italy to become a major supplier of lithium in an environmentally responsible and cost-effective way is most interesting, and we are very excited by the prospect of bringing our technology to the market.”
Geraint Harris, Managing Director of Altamin commented: “The Altamin team completed a thorough collection, analysis and interpretation of historical data that had been dormant in Italy since the 1980’s. One of the results of this assessment is the successful testing of Watercycle’s DLEC™ technology to be able to produce battery grade lithium carbonate crystals directly from the brines synthesised to be representative of the historical well samples. Successful development of this technology has the potential to open the door to the commercial production and sale of lithium in Italy.”
ENDS
Watercycle Technologies - www.watercycletechnologies.com
Watercycle Technologies is a UK-based climate-tech company pioneering sustainable and circular critical mineral recovery essential for a NetZero future, creating clean drinkable water in the process. It is initially focused on two areas critical to lithium production and creating a circular economy for the global energy transition, Direct Lithium Extraction and Crystallisation (DLEC™) and the recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries and black mass (shredded batteries), working alongside major lithium producers globally. Watercycle Technologies’ scalable, modular technology delivers dramatic reductions in costs and has a reduced environmental impact than other processes available. It’s patented advanced membranes and filtration systems can also be applied to the extraction of other critical minerals and metals from all types of water, including wastewater.
For media enquiries about Watercycle Technologies please contact Heloise Grandjouan at heloise.grandjouan@watercycletechnologies.com
About Altamin Limited - www.altamin.com.au
Altamin Limited is a public company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX: AZI), is an exploration and development company with a mission to explore and develop brown-field mineral resources in Italy with a focus on battery metals.
The corporate goal is to produce commodities in Italy that are essential to the advancement of the EU’s energy transition goals, acting in accordance with Italy’s regulatory, environmental and operating framework for the long-term benefit of the country and all stakeholders.
Altamin has released a maiden Mineral Resource estimate for its Lazio Geothermal Lithium Project containing more than 2 Mt of LCE (lithium carbonate equivalent) and 320 Mt of SOP (sulphate of potash equivalent) and a geothermal reservoir estimate of between 140 - 350 MWe which provides the potential energy any future production processes to have a low carbon footprint.