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.
