Lithium extraction pilot to be built at Ohaaki geothermal plant
Silica extraction plant of Geo40 at Ohaaki, NZ (source: Geo40 Ltd.)
Alexander Richter
5 Sep 2021
New Zealand-based Geo40 will start construction of a scaled-up pilot plant for the extraction of Lithium from geothermal brine at the Ohaaki geothermal power plant.
Local news in New Zealand report that the country’s government is looking at an investment into technology player Geo40. The company has developed a technology to not only extract silica from geothermal brine, but also Lithium.
The company developed and tested its “geos-sieve” technology at the Ohaaki geothermal power plant on the North Island of New Zealand. We previously reported on the company’s work on extracting silica from geothermal brine, an important step to then be able to recover more valuable minerals from the brine.
With a planned pilot plant, the company hopes to extract more lithium then from previous tests. The hope is that the technology can then be applied internationally at sites with higher lithium concentrations in geothermal brine. Geo40 expects to start building the plant by Christmas of this year. Having secured a loan of NZ$15 million from a Provincial Growth fund in 2019 for its silica plant, some of the loan was swapped over for an equity stake.
There are now discussions of further investment into the lithium expansion.
Source: TVNZ
