News

From now on, the "Question and Answer (Q&A)" section can be found on the UnLimited homepage. In addition to general questions about the UnLimited project, the questionnaire deals with technical, ecological, and economic questions about lithium extraction from deep geothermal waters.

Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection, the partners in the UnLimited research project are developing and testing an extraction process for the co-production of lithium from hot deep waters in Germany. One year after the start of the project, operations to implement the DLE technology at selected test sites are up and running.

Lithium represents one of the key raw materials for implementing the transportation transition. Due to its specific properties, the light metal is not substitutable in current lithium-ion batteries, regardless of the battery composition. The total demand for lithium is currently still covered by the primary supply from mining production. Thus, the secondary sector does not play a role in this context so far. Looking ahead to 2040, this will change.

To better identify future price and supply risks in the supply of lithium, the German Mineral Resources Agency (DERA) held a digital industry workshop on this topic at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) on June 23, 2022, together with industry representatives.

As part of the UnLimited research project, a lithium workshop around extraction techniques of lithium from geothermal brines was held at Geotherm 2022 last Friday, June 3.

Under the headline "Geothermal lithium: dream or reality?" an international workshop on lithium extraction from deep geothermal waters took place at the GW-SDG in Paris on May 19, 2022.

To characterize the fluid residence times in the reservoir, an artificial marking of the thermal water circuit started at the UnLimited test site in Bruchsal at the end of February 2022. For this purpose, a defined amount of a conservative tracer was injected at the reinjection well. The dimensioning and evaluation of the artificial fluid tracer is carried out by the Unlimited research team of the University of Göttingen.

The UnLimited research project invites you to participate in the workshop "Extraction technologies from geothermal brines for lithium recovery" at this year's Geotherm in Offenburg. The focus will be on the technical approaches and processes of lithium extraction from geothermal brines, as well as further processing. Participation in the workshop is free of charge for all Geotherm visitors.

From November 16 to 17, 2022, the next expert committee meeting for geothermal energy of the GDMB will take place in Bruchsal at the invitation of the Energie Baden-Württemberg (EnBW AG).

As part of the UnLimited project, various sorbents are currently under research considering a sustainable lithium extraction from geothermal fluids in Germany. Experiments in the laboratory revealed a higher lithium adsorption capacity of zeolites. Thus zeolites may represent promising alternatives to manganese oxides.