Petroleum Engineering

Chances for lithium from reservoir waters - Germany & Austria as production location

Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) offers a promising range of extraction techniques for the recovery of lithium from a wide variety of resources. In the field of geothermal energy in particular, only a small range of applications for the simultaneous separation of lithium have now been realized on a technical scale. The lithium content in produced water of oil and gas deposits proves to be relevant for utilization, linking these traditional energy sources to enhanced sustainability.

Phase 1 aimed at answering the question if lithium extraction from reservoir waters could be economically feasible by using enhanced separation techniques besides geothermal sources. For this purpose, produced waters of different partners have been comprehensively analyzed and evaluated to derive a pilot plant design.

Focussing on the construction of a multifunctional mobile container system at pilot scale for on-site investigations the most efficient DLE-method related to the site-specific speciation of reservoir waters was taken into account. The resulting treatment system with as many degrees of freedom as possible enables the 'best case' for deriving a production process. The results obtained provide site-specific parameters that can be used to plan a DLE plant on a pilot scale. Thanks to its multifunctionality, the treatment system can be flexibly adapted to the site-specific material flows and thus derive the key parameters for the scale-up for the co-operation partners involved.