Weardale Lithium extracts optimism from success of its…

Weardale Lithium extracts optimism from success of its trial

A company trying to extract lithium that could be used in electric car batteries from under the North East countryside has hailed the success of its latest trial.

Weardale Lithium, in County Durham, has extracted lithium from geothermal brines under the North Pennines, pointing to the possibility of a domestic supply chain for the important element to the UK’s green energy and transport plans. Using a grant from the Advanced Propulsion Centre’s Automotive Transformation Fund, Weardale Lithium has been trialling the effectiveness of its lithium extraction technologies on underground water taken from boreholes at Eastgate, near Stanhope.

It said that its trials had produced “very positive results with elevated results of lithium extraction and recovery rates”. Lithium is a critical raw material for the production of electric vehicle batteries but there is currently no commercial source of the material in the UK. A number of efforts are being made to set up sources of lithium in the UK, with Weardale Lithium hoping that the successful trial will allow it to move to the next stage of its operations, a pilot demonstration facility on the former cement works at Eastgate.

The company is hoping to eventually produce 10,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate per year, saying that the operations could generate around 125 new full-time, highly skilled jobs, as well as generating around £1bn of gross economic value for the North East.

Stewart Dickson, CEO of Weardale Lithium, said: “The supply of domestic lithium is of strategic importance to the UK’s net zero ambitions and production of high-value batteries for electric vehicles. We have taken a significant step forward in establishing that the naturally occurring geothermal brines are amenable for lithium production and validated a number of direct lithium extraction processes. We will now accelerate and scale-up the testing of increased volumes of brine towards first production.

“The grant from the Advanced Propulsion Centre has been hugely valuable in establishing this positive proof of concept and accelerating test-work to enable us to make the investment decision for the construction and operation of a direct lithium extraction pilot-demonstration plant for test-scale production of lithium. Whilst there is still much to do, we have made significant steps towards being able to generate a domestic supply of lithium in the North East that will support vehicle electrification in the years to come.”

Julian Hetherington, director of Automotive Transformation at Advanced Propulsion Centre said: “I’m delighted that the Automotive Transformation Fund was able to support Weardale Lithium’s Feasibility Study evaluating extraction and production of critical lithium supplies from UK resources centred on a disused brownfield site.

“Projects such as this are vital in securing upstream supply to support the UK’s forecast demand of over 97GWh of automotive batteries by 2030, and could support a significant proportion of the forecast 57,000 tonnes per annum of UK lithium carbonate needs by that time.”