A Springdale-based water treatment company is betting on the state’s growing lithium business by addressing one of the industry’s biggest challenges — concentrating lithium chloride from brine.
Menen Group, which treats wastewater for clients like Tyson Foods, is one of three companies that participated in the second cohort of the Arkansas Lithium Technology Accelerator. The three-week program is run by The Venture Center of Little Rock in partnership with all of the state’s major lithium producers.
“What most people don’t realize is that lithium extraction is really just a water treatment problem,” Christopher Milligan, Menen’s founder and CEO, said in an interview.
The company wasn’t even working on lithium strategies until earlier this year, when it developed a technology called multi-phase vacuum desalination (MPVD).
The patented MPVD tech can concentrate dilute lithium streams with 60% less energy, while also recovering water that can be recycled back into the extraction process. Currently, lithium producers have to use massive amounts of energy and water to concentrate lithium to levels high enough for battery production.
Business Plans
“Our goal is to first make Arkansas the leader in America’s critical mineral supply chain, then export this Arkansas-born technology around the world,” a fact sheet from Menen stated.
Menen currently has seven employees. By the end of 2026, Milligan said the company plans to have 17 people working in south Arkansas, where it will open an office in January. The company aims to own 5,000-10,000 SF of warehouse and office space in the region.
“That’s pretty significant growth,” Milligan said. And with the “right partnership” on brine testing, Milligan said, the company has the ability to receive a $20 million to $40 million U.S. Department of Defense grant.
Of the 10 new hires, two will be hired immediately in January for brine quality control and MPVD demos. The rest will be hired throughout the year for pilot design, testing and fabrication.
By the end of 2026, Menen also wants to be able to leverage local academic partnerships for third-party testing, design, engineering and fabrication, as well as provide hands-on training opportunities.
The company is currently looking to partner with Arkansas’ lithium producers to test its technology on lithium brine. Milligan said the accelerator program helped make those connections.
“There’s $2 trillion under our feet,” Milligan said. “People are coming in here to get it out. It eventually will run out. The more we can have this be the center of innovation and development and build the businesses here that are going to supply the knowledge, the equipment, to all this critical mineral industry — that’s how we create lasting value for Arkansas.”
Accelerator Programming
The Arkansas Lithium Technology Accelerator, now with two cohorts, has evolved since its July debut. The original program worked primarily with Standard Lithium, but the second cohort attracted technical advisers from Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Equinor and Tetra Technologies.
ALTA is the first program of its kind in the United States, sending cohort companies across the state. The first week is in south Arkansas, where participants meet producers, tour facilities and connect with local economic developers. Week two brings cohort members to Little Rock to meet with state officials, potential investors and universities. The final week takes them to northwest Arkansas for meetings with University of Arkansas researchers, venture capital firms and the Walton Family Foundation, a program sponsor.
Arthur Orduña, executive director of The Venture Center, said in an interview that the program format is also different from the center’s typical accelerators. For one, the cohorts are comprised of only three companies.
Orduña said that means the companies can receive focused attention and not compete with each other. And he plans to keep the cohorts as three companies for the foreseeable future.
“The goal is that six months or 12 months from now, those companies have made some degree of commitment to a pilot or some kind of presence here in Arkansas,” he said.
The Arkansas Economic Development Commission helped fund the 2025 cohorts, and just awarded another $150,000 grant for the 2026 cohorts. The Venture Center plans to run at least two in 2026 and is exploring expanding to three.
Cohort Companies
Throughout the program, cohort companies engaged directly with major producers, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Standard Lithium, Albemarle and Lanxess.
Besides Menen Group, another company with Arkansas ties participated in the second cohort.
Tyfast Energy of San Diego already mines vanadium oxide from Hot Springs for use in its electric battery prototypes for heavy machinery. Its technology is designed to deliver diesel-grade performance for heavy-duty electric platforms.
Tyfast is currently seeking $10 million in capital to scale Arkansas-based manufacturing and advance commercialization.
The third company in the cohort is Lithios of Cambridge, Massachusetts. That company offers an advanced lithium extraction platform and is currently raising a $25 million Series A to support commercialization and manufacturing scale-up, building on an ongoing pilot program with an Arkansas lithium producer.
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