Li3 Energy Research Potential For Lithium Brines

By Dave Brown —Exclusive to Lithium Investing News

Li3 Energy, Inc. (OTCBB:LIEG) is a lithium exploration company with various South American lithium brine projects and claims in north east Chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia. Last week, the company entered an exclusive agreement to apply a patented technology to enhance recovery and efficient production of lithium. 

Li3 Energy has been involved in an ongoing research project over the past five months demonstrating the capability of the technology to concentrate brine.  The objective of the research development is to successfully deploy an R3 SPaCeR™ system in a pilot facility where they hope results can then be duplicated in a more practical setting. The process employs rapid evaporation capabilities and in-situ condensation with the potential economic benefit for extraction and recovery of lithium from brine.

Cost savings

In an interview with Lithium Investing News, Li3 Chief Executive Officer, Luis Saenz explained, “The main expected result is to reduce the production timeline. This technology will allow us to extract the water contained in the brine and thus reduce the time that we would need in the evaporation ponds in the typical recovery process. Clearly the reduction of the use of evaporation ponds will save us on capital expenditure, although we will not eliminate the ponds completely with this technology. The added benefit is that we would indeed recover water as opposed to losing it in the evaporation process. Water is a very valuable commodity in the north of Chile so I expect this to be a very large value-add to our project.”

Potential implication for lithium brine producers and developers

Mr. Saenz suggested a broad appeal for the technology, “if, as we expect, the technology proves to be efficient, I would expect other future producers would want to adopt it in their production process. There has not been much research and development investment in the lithium recovery processes and I expect this to be the start of a wave that will make this industry more efficient and competitive through these types of initiatives.”