Electric everything A revolution is here, and an unprecedented demand for critical battery materials. The most expensive of all? Lithium, the critical ingredient in lithium-ion batteries that power everything from your Tesla to your iPhone.
The problem is, lithium extraction is expensive, time-consuming, labor-intensive and environmentally damaging. Mining lithium-rich rocks, crushing them, roasting them, washing them with acid and washing them again, leaving large open pits, or using leaching brine processing, mineral-rich water that is found underground, known as brine, and evaporates under the sun for 24 to 36 months into large By draining ponds. All the metals deposited at the bottom of the ponds – sodium, potassium, magnesium – are removed by exposure to harmful chemicals to reach only lithium.
The brine flows into metal columns, which, using a nano mosaic, first capture all the salts and minerals and then only the lithium. Image Credits: Minerva Lithium
A wave of so-called direct lithium extraction startups are raising their hands to address all of these problems. Among them is Minerva Lithium, a University of North Carolina Greensboro spinoff that developed NanoMosaic, a composite polymer framework that looks like black pebbles and extracts critical materials from radiation within three days. Just one gram of this substance has the same surface area as a football field, Minerva CEO and founder Shiba Daoud said, giving you an idea of how much it takes to produce a large dose. Mineral quantity.
Minerva, which is participating in the TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 Startup Battlefield, says it can extract one metric ton of lithium using just 30,000 gallons of water, and does it in three days. An evaporative brine processor would have to evaporate 500,000 gallons of water to get to the same amount of lithium, Dowd says.
Daud Minerva is a two-step process that involves putting the nano mosaic material into a white filter bag, which is then placed in a metal column over the painting.
“Without using ponds or evaporation, we have water flowing into the first column, which holds all the other minerals like sodium, potassium, magnesium,” Dowd told TechCrunch. “Then it goes into the second column and only the lithium is captured. Then we extract the lithium from the material and heat it up to get lithium crystals.
Nano Mosaic, or “magic material” as Dowd affectionately calls it, is Minerva’s true product offering. The company’s business model is based on selling lithium to battery manufacturers, lithium producers and chemical companies.
“Whether it’s from the lithium industry or chemical companies — for example, bromine producers with lithium in water — we work with brine operators to leverage our technology and their brine resources through strategic partnerships,” Dowd said.
In other words, Minerva will sell Nano Mosaic for free and cheap to brine operators or bromine producers, allowing them to use their resources to extract lithium from the brine. Minerva then buys the raw lithium at low prices, processes it, and sells it to battery manufacturers at market prices that increase daily. In September, the global weighted price of lithium carbonate was $60,442 a tonne, Benchmark Mining Intelligence said. This is an increase from $59,928 last month and $18,353 last year in September. In September 2020, this number was $6,086 per ton.
Daoud says Minerva has found many partners to come aboard. Now, the company needs to raise some more money to take it to the next level. At Startup Battlefield, Minerva is seeking $1 million in funding to get third-party validation to help the startup move to the pilot stage. So far, the company has collected 500,000 dollars through various government grants and competitions.
The test demonstration involves setting up a “skid,” modular unit that holds five filter units that can extract 171 gallons of brine per minute for a total of 11 tons of lithium. At today’s lithium prices, that could mean $230 million in annual revenue.
From left to right: Kelvin Adra (Intern), Hemali Ratnayake (Founder), Shiba Dawood (Founder, CEO) and Zach Allen (Intern). Image Credits: Minerva Lithium
The money will help hire some new technicians to help Minerva reach the certification stage. Currently, Minerva has about Four employeesincluding Dawood and co-founder Hemali Ratnayake.
Dowd was working on her PhD at UNCG’s Joint School of Nanoscience and Engineering, where she was the Ratnayake Professor. Minerva was studying a polymer material similar to the one she was using when she started thinking that batteries could change the world.
“Everyone is talking about batteries, but is anyone really talking about the minerals that are needed in the battery?” David said. I researched and realized that critical materials are going to be the next big thing. Like gold, and lithium is one of them. The United States accounts for 1 percent of global lithium.
Before officially founding Minerva, Dawood and Ratnayake were involved in a National Science Foundation (NSF) program to assist universities with entrepreneurship programs. The two regionally to nationally intensive programs traveled across the United States, interviewing more than 200 customers, from CEOs to field operators, to learn how to access the product market.
Dawood and Ratnayake launched the company after Dawood’s graduation in June 2020. They came up with the name Minerva Lithium because the UNCG logo identifies with the Roman goddess. In the year In 2021, Minerva received pre-seed funding from NSF. In March and April this year, Minerva secured additional funding from North Carolina that took the startup to its next phase.
While Minerva sees lithium as its main attraction, the company sees the nano-mosaic material being used for a variety of purposes.
“The future of [Nano Mosaic] It can extract other important substances such as nickel and cobalt and can even be used for water purification because it removes all dissolved salts from water. “Perhaps the water can be used for irrigation or industrial purposes. It can also be used for drinking if it meets the requirements. So these are some of the other ways these materials are capable.
