SBIR-STTR Award

Enriching lithium from oilfield brines while performing desalination of the produced water can provide a solution that recovers valuable lithium from highly mineralized brine while at the same time making possible to reuse and recycle the treated waste water. State-of-the-art technologies for recovering lithium from oilfield brine include gravity separation, gas flotation, and flocculation. These processes face challenges such as long operation cycles due to the very low mineral concentration, the complicated processes required due to the many competitive minerals in the brine, and high energy consumption. Therefore, innovative metal recovery technologies are needed to provide an economically viable process for lithium recovery from brines and waste streams in a manner that can be integrated with the desalination process. Bettergy proposes to develop a novel membrane technology with high flux, excellent fouling resistance, freedom from pore blockage, lower energy consumption, and excellent reliability for various source brines. The proposed membrane is essentially an inorganic material with uniform pore structure with high ionic selectivity. In combination with the unique design with minimum footprint requirements, position the membrane to meet the challenges of desalination of and lithium recovery from various brines.Lithium powers nearly everything we rely on today ? from cars, laptops, to mobile phones ? and it serves as the foundation for our future. As vehicles and electricity become cleaner, demand for this precious metal is estimated to triple by 2025 to 670,000 tons, representing a market value worth of $13 billion. An integration of lithium recovery from oilfield brines and desalination ? a beneficiary reuse of the oilfield waste water through advanced technologies ? can not only remedy the environmental risk, but also generate financial benefits through the recovery of valuable minerals that are contained in the brines. Bettergy?s technology will use existing oil and gas infrastructure to process the produced water and recover lithium in a cost- effective way, reduce lithium production time by 99% percent compared to conventional methods, and significantly reduce the environmental footprint of the energy industry.

Brines from geothermal sources and oilfield produced water (including produced water, fracking flowback and upstream and downstream wastewaters) contain various minerals and present a massive industrial and environmental liability, which current technologies cannot treat in a cost-effective way. A system that recovers valuable lithium from highly mineralized oilfield and other brines while reusing and recycling the treated wastewater is of great financial and environmental value. Current technologies for recovering lithium from various brines face challenges such as long operation cycles, complicated processes and high energy consumption. Therefore, innovative lithium separation technology is needed to provide an economically viable process for lithium recovery from brines and waste streams in a manner that can be integrated with the desalination process. Bettergy is developing a novel membrane technology that will recover lithium and perform desalination from oilfield brines. This technology will have high water flux, excellent fouling resistance, high lithium recovery rate, lower energy consumption, and excellent reliability. The membranes in the system will be made from inorganic materials with uniform pore structures, possessing high ionic selectivity in the lithium recovery unit and high salt rejection capability in the desalination unit, respectively. In combination with a unique design with minimum footprint requirements, the novel membrane technology will be well-positioned to meet the challenges of desalination and lithium recovery from various brines. The global brine concentration technology market was valued at nearly $12 billion in 2018 and is expected to be reaching to $17 billion in 2026. A cost-effective brine desalination technology is highly needed in the field. Additionally, as lithium batteries power nearly all modern technology (from cell phones, to laptops, to cars, as well as providing residential, commercial and industrial energy storage), the demand for lithium is expected to triple to as much as 670,000 tons by 2025, representing a market worth over $13 billion. The integration of lithium recovery from oilfield brines and desalination in one system will result in the beneficial reuse of oilfield wastewater, reducing the environmental footprint of the oil and gas industry while generating financial benefits through cost-effective recovery of the valuable lithium that is contained in the brines. It will also provide the United States with a domestic source of lithium, which presently is almost entirely imported.