US lithium-extraction company Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) has selected US lithium processor Aquatech to deliver the engineering and process plants for the conversion of lithium chloride intermediate product to battery-grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate at CTR’s Stage 1 Lithium Hydroxide Facility. Construction is expected to start in 2024 and production in 2025.  

CTR says the new plant will be a fully integrated renewable power and lithium extraction facility producing “green” battery-grade lithium hydroxide product from its geothermal brine resource at the Salton Sea in California’s Imperial Valley. Expected annual production is 27,557 tons of battery-grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate, sufficient to make batteries to power around 415,000 EVs. 

The production facility will comprise multiple process plants that integrate membrane, evaporation and crystallization technology and use lithium chloride eluate recovered by means of direct lithium extraction from the geothermal lithium brine resource.

CTR’s entire Hell’s Kitchen project has an estimated projected yearly production capacity of 1,100 MW of baseload renewable power and 300,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent products, enough to support production of more than 5 million EVs.

Source: CTR