Milda Saenz

EnergyX is a sustainable energy company focused on direct lithium extraction, refinery and battery technology. Combining these technologies from brine to battery will create a process dramatically lowering the cost of lithium resources. The company’s goal is to develop technology and assets that turn it into one of the premier, low-cost lithium providers for the growing lithium-ion battery industry. The electric vehicle (EV) and energy storage revolution is generating high demand for lithium, with some analysts forecasting orders-of-magnitude demand increases. As the EV market rapidly expands, millions of large-scale battery packs will be in demand. The estimated annual production of EV’s is 20,000,000 per year. For one 85-kWh car, the price of the lithium in the battery is approximately $2,945 per car. Residential (home) and commercial batteries are also gaining market demand traction, and California has implemented law stating by 2020 all new homes will require solar arrays. Companies already producing lithium are attempting to increase production as battery cell manufacturers are scaling up lithium-ion production with mega factories and actively acquiring raw materials through long term off-take supply agreements. In the Lithium Triangle, where 50-70% of the world’s known lithium reserve is located, current methods of extraction are based off outdated, natural evaporation pond technology, which takes 18 months, and loses 50-70% of the lithium due to co-precipitation. Our solution is to optimize and apply a highly scalable lithium extraction membrane to the process. The ability to efficiently extract and aggregate the lithium elements from the salt brines using proprietary, multi-level, synthetic ion separation techniques can increase time efficiency by 100x and recovery rate by 300%.