Lithium mining and battery manufacturing

While demand is only increasing for lithium and lithium-ion batteries, lithium mining and battery production can be extremely resource intensive. These processes require vast amounts of energy, land, and time, and increasing regulations now mandate these operations also treat their wastewater.

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Membrane filtration with ERDs

Lithium extraction often relies on evaporation, which can require vast amounts of energy, land, and time. Increasing regulations are now mandating lithium ore mines and battery production facilities to treat their wastewater, which is an energy intensive process. Membrane technology, in conjunction with energy recovery devices (ERDs), can vastly reduce the electricity, steam, land, and other resources required to produce lithium ion batteries compared to traditional methods, reducing or replacing lengthy evaporation periods in lithium extraction.

This technology can also more efficiently clean wastewater produced by lithium mining, refining, and battery production, addressing pain points along key areas of the supply chain. Over traditional thermal and solar evaporation, membrane filtration with ERDs offers a lower equipment CAPEX, reduced energy consumption, smaller footprint, and significantly shorter production time.

Another driver is that many waste streams contain valuable ions that can be reused or resold. At many cathode manufacturing facilities, RO systems with PX technology are used to cost effectively turn cathode manufacturing waste streams into solid fertilizers (e.g., ammonium sulfate or ammonium phosphate) or other valuable commodities (e.g., sodium sulfate) depending on cathode chemistry which are then sold to help offset the cost of the treatment system.