Europe’s largest lithium source is located in the so-called Upper Rhine Graben.
(Photo: Juergen Feuerer / Chrome Orange /)
Zurich, Düsseldorf The lithium start-up Vulcan Energy is taking over a geothermal plant in the Palatinate to set up a new test facility for lithium production. As the company announced on Friday, it will pay 31.5 million euros for the Insheim geothermal plant between Landau in the Palatinate and Karlsruhe. In a second step, Vulcan wants to build a pilot system there, with which the company wants to filter the valuable metal from hot, mineral-containing liquid from the underground.
The project is extremely important for the listed start-up: Vulcan founder Horst Kreuter said in an interview with Handelsblatt that the aim of the transaction was to refine the lithium extraction process. “This gives us time to develop the technology.”
Vulcan Energy wants to mine the most important raw material of lithium batteries for electric cars in Germany without emitting greenhouse gases. The company wants to use the geothermal deposits in the Upper Rhine Rift between Basel and Frankfurt.
The geothermal plants pump hot brine from a depth of thousands of meters to the surface. There the liquid gives off heat, which is used to produce electricity. Eventually the water is fed back underground.
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However, Vulcan has measured a comparatively high concentration of lithium in the geothermal brines in the region. Therefore, the company wants to filter the lithium out of the liquid before it is fed back into the ground. The energy required for the filter process can be generated from geothermal energy – unlike lithium ore mining, no greenhouse gases are produced.
Ambitious goals
In order for this to pay off, the filter technology has to filter out as high a proportion of the lithium dissolved in the brine as possible. “The aim is to be able to extract over 90 percent of the lithium contained in the brine,” emphasizes Kreuter.
In addition, the system must be able to pump a large amount of mineral-rich water to the surface. The plant in Insheim, which is now to serve as a pilot system, currently produces around 70 liters per second. For the commercial geothermal plants that Vulcan wants to build in the region, Kreuter is aiming for a flow rate of 100 liters per second. In the industry, this is considered ambitious – the company boss, however, considers the goal to be realistic.
So far, his company has only isolated small amounts of lithium chloride from the brine and processed it in the laboratory to produce high-purity lithium hydroxide, which is also used in the batteries of electric cars. The start-up has yet to provide proof that the process is also worthwhile on an industrial scale. But Vulcan is already valued at 870 million euros on the stock exchange.
At the beginning of November, a report by an activist shortseller had raised doubts about the forecasts published by Vulcan about the effectiveness of the company’s own technology. However, Vulcan had successfully taken action against the report in Australia. In the meantime, the investor who had bet on a falling Vulcan share price had to take the report offline.
Since then, the share price has recovered significantly from a sharp slump, also because Vulcan has concluded purchase agreements with car manufacturers such as VW, Renault and Stellantis. Vulcan Energy wants to be able to produce 40,000 tons of lithium hydroxide annually by the end of 2025, enough for around one million electric cars a year. The demand is great, emphasizes Kreuter: “We have already sold almost the entire amount through binding purchase agreements.”
More: Dispute over huge lithium deposits: why short sellers attack Vulcan Energy.
