There’s something in the water in south Arkansas, and a Canadian company is moving in with a new way to get it out, and eventually into cellphone batteries, laptop computers and electric cars.
Standard Lithium Ltd. of Vancouver, British Columbia, hopes that — like building a better mousetrap — its novel plan for extracting high-grade lithium from Arkansas’ vast subterranean brine deposits will have the world beating a path to El Dorado.
The company, relying on existing industries that have been extracting most of the world’s bromine from Union and Columbia counties’ brine stream for decades, plans to put a demonstration plant in Union County this year. It could be operational by early 2019.
If the focused extraction method works on an industrial scale, the impact on south Arkansas’ economy could be striking as global battery manufacturers and others take notice, company officials and local economic developers say.
“We’re very excited about what they’re doing,” said Brandon Barnette, economic development project manager for the El Dorado-Union County Chamber of Commerce. “It has the potential to be very significant. If the pilot plant proves economically viable, it will mean many jobs and an outpouring of investment in this part of the state.”
Markets are clamoring for lithium carbonate, which the project will gather in a continuous process of selective crystallization, according to CEO Robert Mintak of Standard Lithium, a publicly traded company listed in Canada on the TSX Venture Exchange and on the Deutsche Borse in Germany.
Mintak said that south Arkansas, where Standard has an option agreement with Tetra Technologies Inc. for 33,000 acres of brine lands, is the only practical place on earth to test the new extraction method. He and Professor Jason Hein, a consultant and researcher at the University of British Columbia, discussed the project last week with Arkansas Business.
“We know our process will work, because we’ve made it work in the lab, but it needs to be deployed at a location with ample water, and Arkansas has existing large-scale production infrastructure and brine extraction, processing and re-injection facilities.”
Mintak emphasized that the pilot plant is designed to prove the viability of the process, not produce marketable lithium. Years could pass before Arkansas lithium reaches the market, he said, but he’s optimistic.
“Nothing is going to be sold from the pilot project, but it’s going to demonstrate to the world that we can produce lithium of battery-grade quality in Arkansas at costs that we are targeting to be among the lowest anywhere, and in a jurisdiction that’s not politically challenged.”
For decades after petroleum was discovered in the Smackover geological formation of Union and Columbia counties a century ago, brine was an unwelcome byproduct of oil drilling.
Then state chemists found that Smackover brine was filled with bromine, a key ingredient in flame retardants. Commercial production began in the late 1950s, and the bromine industry now employs close to 1,000 people in the state. For years, southern Arkansas has produced all U.S. bromine, worth some $800 million a year, and the Arkansas Geological Survey calls it “the leading mineral commodity, in terms of value, produced in Arkansas.”
Companies like the Albemarle Corp. of North Carolina and Lanxess, a German specialty chemicals concern that in 2017 acquired Chemtura and its subsidiary, Great Lakes Solutions, produce more than 200,000 tonnes of bromine from their Arkansas operations each year. A tonne, or metric ton, is about 2,200 pounds, or 1.1 U.S. tons.
Arkansas’ bromine production is second only to that of Israel, which draws it from the Dead Sea.
“Albemarle and others had previously identified a very large lithium resource in Arkansas,” Mintak said. “You’ve also got cheap electricity, much cheaper than in alternative sites like Chile or in the high Andes of Argentina. There are also minimal permitting risks in Arkansas, which we see as a great state for doing business, and a decades-long history of working with brine.”
All those factors fit snugly into a business plan that investors approved for bringing a lithium project into production “using modern selective extraction processing in a way that has not been commercialized anywhere in the world,” Mintak said.
Standard Lithium has commissioned Saltworks Technologies Inc. of Richmond, British Columbia, to design and build the test plant, which will be largely put together and tested in Canada before it’s shipped to the El Dorado location. The cost of the pilot operation, Mintak estimated, will range into “tens of millions of dollars.” Hunt Guillot & Associates of Ruston, Louisiana, has been engaged for engineering services and site preparation, including utility connections and brine pipeline connections.
Mintak said Standard Lithium stands out from the many companies pursuing lithium projects in today’s market by securing brine access from established operators and by having signed contracts to make the pilot plant a reality. “Instead of spending hundreds of millions on a commercial project immediately, we’ll spend tens of millions on a pilot plant, run it for 12 months, detail it for investors, then run opex [operating expenses] for electric car companies and battery companies to say, ‘Look, it works, here are the costs, and how much do you want?” he said.
‘Layman’s Explanation’
Mintak turned to Hein, a synthetic reaction chemist whose previous work focused on purifying pharmaceuticals, to explain the new extraction process. “I’d like to hear his layman’s explanation myself,” Mintak said, “and he makes a lot better quotes than I do.”
Largest Chemical Companies, ranked by number of employees in Arkansas. Available in PDF and spreadsheet formats.
Traditional lithium extraction from brine uses huge evaporation ponds to hold pumped-in brine, Hein and Mintak said. Chemicals are added, and after 12 to 18 months, the residue is a concentrated lithium solution that can then be refined. But the facilities can take a decade to build, are costly and lose a great deal of lithium to inefficiency.
“My pharmaceutical background is not just understanding chemistry, but also how to get it pure, to get the only thing you want,” Hein said. “I was used to taking a drug molecule mixed with a bunch of other things and pulling it out. Now I’ll be taking one particular salt and water from a whole bunch of other salts.”
Current extraction methods use 1930s technology and a crystallization process Hein compared to carpet-bombing in warfare.
“They go into a water solution with all kinds of salts, hit it with kind of a giant sledgehammer and get all kinds of things out. You get lithium, but you also get things like sodium and potassium. Then you go back, recrystallize and do it over again: Smash it to the ground, then pick it all up and smash it again. And you’re losing lithium every time you do that.”
Hein and his team designed a reactor that carefully controls conditions and crystallizes only what he wants, he said. “We bring the brine in, do a single processing step, isolate the material, crystallize it and send it to the next step.”
Arkansas produces about 9.4 billion gallons of brine per year, according to 2010-16 average statistics reported by the Arkansas Oil & Gas Commission.
Standard Lithium says the state has “a permitting regime with a long history of approving operations that remove, process and re-inject massive volumes of brine.”
The industry has faced environmental controversy, because bromine products can harm the environment and human health.
Great Lakes Chemical Corp., now part of Lanxess, was fined $190,000 in 1994 for water pollution in Arkansas.
In 2005, one Great Lakes worker died and 11 others were injured when bromine-based materials were accidentally released, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.
RELATED: Lithium: Keeping the Cellphone and the Brain Humming
Falling Into Place
Mintak said his investors have promised and provided him and his partner with the funds to “hire the team and acquire the projects that we want, and as we have executed on our business plan they have done their part. It’s been about 15 months since we first stepped foot in El Dorado, and everything has fallen into place better than we anticipated.
“We’ve been able to get our own land position, an agreement with Tetra, which had the largest land position, and then execute an agreement with Lanxess that will allow us to demonstrate the technology that we’re using to unlock the lithium in Arkansas.
“Instead of trying something in the lab and then forcing it on the project, the parties we’re working with in Arkansas have provided us the brine, so we know the lithium is there in large volume.”
Barnette, the El Dorado economic developer, said the Canadian company made a good early impression on south Arkansas officials. “Standard Lithium has been transparent and courteous in all its dealings with us in El Dorado, and forthcoming to our community and others in the region, like Magnolia, that might benefit from this project.” Albemarle has operations in both Magnolia and El Dorado.
Cammie Hambrice of Magnolia Economic Development declined to comment on Standard Lithium, telling Arkansas Business that she generally does not speak about industries unless they ask her to.
Mintak said Standard Lithium’s teams in Toronto and British Columbia have done processing work on the brine for a year. “We will be moving our focus from our team in Canada to building our project in Arkansas outside Lanxess’ site and on our own property. That’s where we are today.”
Sign up for Daily E-news
