To achieve our Net Zero goals by 2050, the world will need to sustainably source lithium for electric vehicles and stationary grid storage. One method for extracting these minerals is through high-salinity brine - and using large evaporation ponds to evaporate more than 90% of the water.
The challenges with large-scale evaporation ponds include:
It can cost up to $35 million to construct an evaporation pond with a capacity of only 8000 m3/day. A large-scale evaporation pond can easily cost in the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars!
There is a significant risk of high-salinity brine leaking into the soil, causing irreversible damage to the environment
The carbon footprint associated with excavating land in order to build these large evaporation ponds is colossal
The Innovation Behind BRINIFI
Discover how BRINIFI is revolutionizing mineral extraction from brines with cutting-edge technology.
Our innovation replaces large, expensive and carbon-intensive evaporation ponds with affordable spray nozzles. That’s right! You heard us correct!
Spray nozzles eject millions of tiny droplets containing both fresh water molecules and salt particles. These droplets are ejected at a high velocity! Whilst the droplet is in motion, water is evaporated off the surface of the droplet (surface tension keeps the salt particles inside). However, after the droplet has came to a standstill, the entire droplet evaporates - including the salt!
Our technology observes water droplet ejection behaviour (droplet mass, speed) from spray nozzle in order to determine the “cut-off” point before the entire droplet evaporates. This means we can evaporate only the fresh water whilst maintaining the salt!
Agricultural companies which use spray nozzles typically try to minimise how much water is evaporated before it reaches the specimen. However, we are doing the exact opposite. We are evaporating as much water as possible to increase the salt concentration of the brine.
Spray nozzles can accelerate the rate of evaporation rate by a factor of millions - offering a low-cost, carbon-free and environmentally-friendly alternative to evaporation ponds.
We see the potential of our technology to even be used for desalination!