Geothermal Engineering Ltd. (GEL) has announced that it will build a lithium recovery plant at its United Downs site in Cornwall. The feedstock is to be brine pumped from the company's existing geothermal wells. ThinkGeoEnergy reports that commercial operation should start by 2029.

Output

Annual output is put at roughly 1,500 tonnes of technical-grade lithium carbonate. The article equates this with the needs of 180,000 typical electric car batteries. The plan was made public shortly after GEL said it had recovered lithium carbonate from geothermal brine at a purity above 99.3 percent, a level at which the product counts as technical grade.

The new plant is to be much larger than GEL's demonstration unit in Cornwall, whose capacity is 100 tonnes of lithium carbonate a year. According to the article, the site could eventually reach tens of thousands of tonnes.

Spending and public support

GEL expects to spend about GBP 43 million on the venture. It earlier received an Offer in Principle worth close to GBP 10 million from the government's DRIVE35 Automotive Transformation Fund. Close to 50 direct jobs are expected, plus around 80 in the supply chain.

Dr Ryan Law, GEL's chief executive, is quoted as saying that lithium is fundamental to the technologies behind the car industry's move to zero-emission vehicles. ThinkGeoEnergy adds that lithium demand is forecast to grow by 1,100 percent by 2035 and that the UK government has acted to unlock close to GBP 230 million of private investment in two lithium projects, one in Cornwall and one in Teesside.