New tech aims to remove lithium for electric automobile batteries from oilfield waste

January 13, 2020
Technology

Lithium — a member of electric car batteries — is a flourishing market, approaching to nearby $100 billion by some estimates in a subsequent decade.

Mining a steel can come during a high environmental cost, so some Alberta companies are building greener descent methods by partnering with an doubtful fan — a oil and gas industry.

“Working with a oil and gas attention we can take advantage of a infrastructure already existent in Alberta,” pronounced Amanda Hall, boss of Summit Nanotech.

The infrastructure isn’t a usually advantage. The Leduc Formation, a source of Alberta’s initial large oil boom, is also a abounding lithium deposit. There are about 3.6 million tonnes of lithium in a province, according to a Canadian Lithium Association.

Alberta companies are eyeing new ways to remove lithium from brine used in a oilfield. (Radio-Canada)

Hall’s association uses nanotechnology, a scholarship that works with materials during a molecular or atomic level, to selectively filter lithium out of a squandered saltwater brine used in oil wells.

“Lithium direct is going adult in a nearby destiny since of electric vehicles … so a direct for a record is also growing,” she said.

Her association hopes to exam a tech on oilfield sites by a finish of this year, and once they’re adult and running, will set adult modular units nearby good heads to filter out a steel and yield it to whoever owns a land’s vegetable rights — during a fee.

Daniel Alessi is an associate highbrow during a University of Alberta, who specializes in purify lithium descent from a oilfield. (Audrey Neveu/Radio-Canada)

Daniel Alessi, an associate highbrow during a University of Alberta, pronounced other companies, like E3 Metals, are also operative to rise opposite descent methods.

Alessi pronounced while any apparatus descent record will have some grade of a disastrous footprint, there are options to implement squandered healthy gas or even geothermal appetite to energy a extraction.

“The large doubt these days is either it’s going to be economically feasible,” he said.

But with companies like Tesla augmenting their outlay of electric vehicles, direct is a certain thing.

“Unless somebody comes with a sorcery new battery technology, a opinion for this region, a lithium extraction, a lithium attention is flattering promising,” Alessi said.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/lithium-alberta-oilsands-1.5424527?cmp=rss