[Extract] Trust the Protons to leave chemical impurities out of your Battery-Grade Lithium! - Saad Dara - Mangrove Lithiu - a podcast by Antoine Walter

Saad Dara is the CEO and Founder of Mangrove Lithium. Mangrove Lithium develops an innovative approach to Lithium Refining which is using electrochemical processes to reach battery grade from diverse raw sources. 

The decarbonization of our World oftentimes resembles a set of Russian Dolls. First, we needed electric cars, so the manufacturers started shifting their internal combustion lines to EV ones. Then, batteries were on the critical path, so the World frantically built Gigafactories. As a result, Lithium became the bottleneck, and over the next decade, we'll try to catch up. But in doing so, we may well bump into the next problem: missing chemicals.

Don't roll your eyes too fast: I do know that Soda Ash, for instance, is pretty commonplace and shouldn't be an issue. Except if you are in the middle of the high Andes, and especially on the Argentinan side, where dozens of junior lithium companies are currently cutting their teeth. 

If you don't have enough Soda Ash, you can't refine your Lithium Chloride to Carbonate, and why is that a problem, well, that means you have to truck large volumes of concentrated brines away, and reach a place where chemicals are available. Not a big deal? Well, except if you compound in the absence of paved roads around most of the Salars that will enter into production in the next years, or simply the fact that bringing a truck up to an altitude of over 4'000 meters is not that easy. 

While I was up in Olaroz, Cachi, and Jama, I crossed two different trucks in two different places that had rolled over onto the side of the road. So again, I'd say, not a piece of cake.

But if evaporation ponds are so efficient in the high Andes, it's, of course, thanks to widely available solar energy. Something energy companies start to leverage by installing solar farms.

So what if it were possible to use that electrical energy right where it's produced, to refine the concentrated brines that evaporation ponds output into battery-grade carbonate or hydroxide? 

Well, some companies have started to explore that electrochemical road, and you would have guessed, that's where Mangrove Lithium is focusing. 

Their technology was born as a water treatment and desalination play, yet the ideal product-market fit seems to rather be in the lithium industry - once again, a proof of the high porosity between those two worlds. 

Let me avoid spoiling you all of my conversation with Saad Dara, but what I can already tell you is that we had good fun recording, I hope you'll enjoy it as well, if you do, please remember to take that episode and share it with a friend, a colleague, your boss or your team, wherever you're listening or watching that, make sure to like and subscribe, and I'll meet you on the other side!

➡️ Check out the entire article on how Mangrove Lithium is the Jewel in Bill Gates' crown on the (don't) Waste Water website!

Further episodes of (don't) Waste Water!

Further podcasts by Antoine Walter

Website of Antoine Walter