The world is moving towards renewable and clean sources of energy to have a green environment. This is being supported by the advent of electric vehicles in the industry. However, there is a complicated situation in this arena as well. The batteries used in these electric vehicles have lithium that enables not very clean lithium mining practices. It was called the paradox of clean electric vehicles.
The engineers who wish to incorporate environmentally friendly operations in the system are looking for alternate methods for making the batteries. It was announced this week by Lilac Solutions which is a lithium extraction technology company, that they have secured funding of $150 million collected as Series B financing for a new technology that will be able to make lithium recovery fast and make it more eco-friendly.
“Electric vehicles are a low-carbon success story, but the lithium raw materials needed for batteries have become a serious bottleneck,” said in a statement Dave Snydacker, CEO of Lilac Solutions. “The lithium industry has been plagued by technical and environmental problems that have put the energy transition in jeopardy. Lilac’s technology solves these problems and will finally enable lithium production at a scale demanded the energy transition.”
This technology significantly reduces the use of land and freshwater for the extraction of lithium from continental brines and its investors say the product is 10,000x faster than the competition. Furthermore, one of the most fascinating aspects is that it enables the brine to return underground once the lithium is extracted. This reduces negative environmental damage. There is a lot of damage done in the current methods for lithium extraction through evaporation ponds.
It was stated by CNBC that the Lilac Solutions CEO and founder Dave Snydacker said the new technology can extract as much lithium from a one-acre sized system as the traditional method would get from a 10,000-acre facility with an evaporation pond.
The timing of the technology is in coherence with Biden’s new strategy of having half of the automobile sales done in 2030 in the sector of electric vehicles. He has set ambitious goals for the country.