Standard Lithium installs commercial DLE column at demonstration plant
Standard Lithium Ltd. has installed a commercial-scale Direct Lithium Extraction (“DLE”) column at its demonstration plant near El Dorado.
The column is a LiPROLithium Selective Sorption unit, supplied by Koch Technology Solutions, LLC.
By: MagnoliaReporter.com Staff
Standard Lithium Ltd. has installed a commercial-scale Direct Lithium Extraction (“DLE”) column at its demonstration plant near El Dorado.
The column is a LiPROLithium Selective Sorption unit, supplied by Koch Technology Solutions, LLC.
The column has been installed and integrated with the company’s existing demonstration plant to test and derisk the design for commercial applications of the LiPROLSS technology. It is the same size and design as those that the company intends to use (in multiple trains) in its commercial applications for the Phase 1A and South West Arkansas projects in Union and Lafayette counties.
The commercial-scale LiPRO LSS column is currently being filled with Koch Engineered Solutions proprietary lithium-selective sorption with commissioning expected later this month. Extensive performance testing of the commercial-scale DLE technology will be performed over the following months under the supervision of Standard Lithium and KTS technical specialists.
Standard Lithium Director, President & COO, Dr. Andy Robinson, said, “This is an important derisking milestone for Standard Lithium and our partners. Our team has been successfully running the LiPROLSS technology since October 2022, and we have already successfully completed scale-ups of the DLE equipment at the demonstration plant; this is our final stage of derisking the technology. The data gathered from this commercial-scale unit will provide crucial validation and derisking information for our ongoing project finance processes, as well as FEED and DFS studies for the South West Arkansas Project. We’re very grateful for our partners Koch Technology Solutions and Lanxess who have helped to make this final derisking step possible.”
Standard Lithium's demonstration plant is the only large-scale, continuously operating DLE plant in North America. Initially commissioned in May 2020, the plant has processed over 16.4 million gallons (62 million liters) of Smackover brine.
“The long-term operation of our demo plant has been crucial in replicating and understanding the real-world dynamic conditions of continuous commercial-scale operations,” said Dr. Robinson. “With our partner Koch Technology Solutions, we have been able to tailor and optimize the multi-step flowsheet that will allow the plant to be scaled for commercial production. The knowledge we have on-hand from over four years of operations, combined with an optimized flowsheet and now a commercial-scale DLE column, puts us in a strong position as we continue to advance our projects.”
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