Planning permission granted for UK's largest lithium extraction facility

Located in Eastgate in Weardale, County Durham, the facility will produce battery-grade lithium carbonate from geothermal groundwaters, with plans to scale to a commercial production target of minimum 10 000 t/yr in the coming years.

Situated on the site of the former cement works at Eastgate, which was demolished over 20 years ago, the plant is a significant regeneration and redevelopment scheme. Utilising this brownfield site, the existing infrastructure and connectivity is well suited to bring the site back into sustainable use.

As a result of the successful planning application, Weardale Lithium are proceeding with the development of a market leading, continuous flow, lithium extraction demonstration plant. It will operate an end-to-end, integrated direct lithium extraction (DLE) and carbonisation process to produce battery grade lithium carbonate on-site.

The demonstration facility is the UK's largest permitted lithium brine extraction plant and the only one currently approved to produce battery grade lithium carbonate on-site. Continuous flow trials are a key differentiator as they enable abstraction well performance and reservoir measurement, DLE performance optimisation, and the ability to provide multiple, large battery-grade lithium carbonate samples for customer and offtake specification and validation.

The approved plans represent a multi-million-pound investment in the local and regional economy. Initially, the development will create between 20 and 50 jobs on site, along with additional employment within the local construction sector and supply chains. During the commercial phase, the company estimates it will create approximately 125 highly skilled jobs and generate approximately £1 billion gross value added (GVA) for the North East region.

The successful planning application for the demonstration plant follows more than three years of multi-disciplinary workstreams, including extensive testing of different DLE technology types to find the optimal way to extract lithium from the geothermal groundwaters beneath the North Pennine Orefield. DLE is a low-impact, low-carbon, and low-water usage method of extracting lithium, and will be done so using renewable energy sources where feasible.

Geothermal groundwaters, or brines as they can be referred to due to their highly saline nature, will be extracted from an existing deep, high specification, commercial-grade abstraction well located close to the processing site, and transported via pipelines to the demonstration plant. This enables the demonstration plant to operate with continuous flow at significant flow rates. Judicious use of pipes negates the need for local tanker traffic on minor roads, ensures no competing land use, and minimises visual impact and carbon footprint.

Read the article online at: https://www.globalminingreview.com/mining/11022025/planning-permission-granted-for-uks-largest-lithium-extraction-facility/