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(Kitco News) – Chris Doornbos, founder and CEO of E3 Lithium (TSXV:ETL), says the first projects ex-China to use Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technology will come online in 2025. The company just started its own pilot operations.

Doornbos spoke to Kitco mid-September at the Fastmarkets European Battery Raw Materials Conference 2023 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

E3’s Direct Lithium Extraction pilot plant was recently commissioned in southern Alberta. Data collected throughout the pilot operations will inform the commercial design of the processing facility for prefeasibility and feasibility studies. E3 Lithium has a 16-million-tonne resource of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) in the measured and indicated category, and 0.9 million tonnes LCE inferred.

Interview edited for clarity.

Kitco Mining: You had an announcement recently, what was it, Chris?

 

Doornbos: We put out our inaugural pilot results from the operations that we just started, so we’ve been running the pilot for about six weeks, about half of that was commissioning, the other half has been operating, producing a lithium concentrate. We put out the results, what that concentrate looks like, some of the performance metrics last week. Results are exactly as we expected and what we’d hoped, over 90 percent recovery, over 80 percent purity, producing something around 800 almost 900 milligrams per litre lithium, so very exciting. This is what we want to see, this is going to lead us to be able to make battery-grade lithium hydroxide.

Kitco Mining: What are the next steps?

Doornbos: Now we’re going to operate this thing for quite some time, we want to see it continually develop these results over the fall, effectively. We’ve got three systems we’re testing so we’re going to continue to test all over the next three-four months. All of that allows us to design a commercial system for the commercial plant and that will be hopefully happening by the end of this year. We’ll have that done and then published in Q1 of next year and that will be in the form of a prefeasibility study. So we’ll have project economics, capital costs, operating costs, value of the project, as well as all the engineering process flow sheet that you’re going to need to see on how this is going to develop. And that’s a huge milestone for us because once the pilot is operated and that is out and into the public, that really allows us to propel the project forward towards a design-construction mode. So next year it’ll be feasibility, detailed design-construction, a lot of the corporate development activities really ramp up post-prefeasibility study, so we’re going to be staffing that team as well, so very exciting. This is a really big move for the company.

Kitco Mining: We’re at the European Battery Raw Materials show, you were on a panel talking about DLE. There seems to be a number of other projects that are coming to the fore right now, so maybe if you can talk a little bit about maturity in the industry, maybe talk about your peers, what do you see broadly happening with the industry that you’re focused on?

 

Doornbos: The Direct Lithium Extraction industry or brines projects that use direct extraction processing have really advanced in the last couple of years and it’s actually very exciting to see some of the European companies that are developing. Obviously we’re very close with some of the North American companies that are developing this type of technology, but what’s most fascinating is that all of the flow sheets that you’re seeing in terms of the process design for the DLE, and then what happens after DLE in terms of the further polishing and then conversion to lithium hydroxide and crystallization, those flow sheets are all looking more and more the same. And I think what’s happening in the industry is what would normally happen, which is as the technology matures, you sort of land on one particular flowsheet or version of that same flowsheet that everyone ends up deploying, and so that in my mind is a clear sign of the maturation of direct extraction in the industry. In my opinion, this is no longer an if, it’s been an if for a long time, we’ve definitively crossed that hurdle and it’s just a matter of when. I think the first couple of projects you’re going to see operating here in 2025, and then the cascade’s going to happen ’26, ’27, ’28 as the technology becomes more ubiquitous and the early adopters that are going to be operating in 2025 turn their projects on. Obviously that’s a huge catalyst for the whole industry to see a commercially operating plant outside of China that demonstrates direct extraction.

Kitco Mining: What’s your funding right now?

Doornbos: We just completed a $20 million financing so looking at the financials at the end of Q2, combined with that there’s about $38 million of capital in the bank. Plus we have a Strategic Innovation Fund grant, we have most of that still left to deploy, and our pilot’s being funded with that and Natural Resources Canada’s grant, that was $3.5 million, so the company is very well funded to accomplish its goals for the next couple of years, which is very exciting for me because it allows the company to sit down and really focus on getting deliverables out. We’ve got a lot of really exciting project milestones to accomplish but also a lot of really exciting corporate development milestones and now we’re funded to be able to accomplish those.