Broadly speaking, direct extraction refers to a family of technologies dedicated to selectively extracting lithium from brines. These salty groundwaters are sometimes naturally very concentrated in lithium, particularly in the famous “lithium triangle” (the north of Chile and Argentina and the south of Bolivia, where the majority of the world’s reserves are located). But today, the traditional extraction route involves evaporation, via large pale blue basins in which the brines wait two years in the sun.
«DLE is much faster and allows you not to lose half of the lithium along the way“, summarizes Gabriel Toffani, CEO of the young French company Adionics which promises to be able to capture up to 99% of the lithium present in the water pumped to the surface, against “maximum 50%, when everything goes well, with the evaporative route“. On paper, the DLE also makes it possible to reinject the captured brines to minimize disruption to the exploited aquifers. Which is not yet the case in practice.
Because direct lithium extraction is not completely new. On the Argentinian salar (or salt desert) of Hombre Muerto, a factory has been operating since 1997. It recently fell into the hands of the Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto, via its mega-purchase of the lithium giant Arcadium at the end of 2024. Several large Chinese miners also use DLE, often supplied by the company Sunresin New Materials, on the highlands of Qinghai and Tibet. Proof of the criticality of this subject, DLE is part of the lithium extraction and refining technologies for which China announced export restrictions on January 2, 2025.
15% of demand in 2030
Nothing new? “So far, existing plants use a hybrid method, with an evaporation phase. Today, “pure” DLE begins to reach technological maturity. We are very optimistic», Comments Federico Gay, lithium analyst at the specialist firm Benchmark Minerals. He estimates that DLE already supplies 12% of the global market. But thanks to the arrival of factories like that of Eramet, it will reach around 15% at the end of the decade. At the same time, demand for lithium should almost triple, to approach three million tonnes per year! In 2030, the majority of lithium will still come from conventional rock mines. But the boost provided by the DLE is welcome, because analysts predict that the market will fall into deficit by the end of the decade.
Consequence: projects are multiplying with 2027 in their sights. Beyond its purchase of Arcadium at a high price, Rio Tinto announced in mid-December an investment of 2.5 billion euros to build a large factory in Rincon (where it has a pilot plant) in Argentina! The American International Battery Metals (whose technology supplies the Ensorcia group, which has a lithium refining project in France), built its first, more modest, modular plant last summer on a US Magnesium site in the ‘Utah.
-The Chilean lithium giant, SQM, which has tested a large number of technologies on the Atacama Salar, has just invested in the French Adionics. Recognition for its liquid solvent-based extraction technology, which is intended to be relatively insensitive to impurities such as magnesium and economical in fresh water. While many oil companies are also eyeing white gold, the American ExxonMobil is also banking on DLE, in Arkansas, not far from the Standard Lithium company, supported by the Norwegian Equinor and a subsidiary of the Koch conglomerate.
$10,000 per ton is not enough
Adsorbents, ion exchanges, solvents, membranes… “There are several technologies in the DLE family, which are not all at the same level of technological maturity», recalls Federico Gay. Today, adsorbents (solids which capture lithium on their surface in contact with brines, used by Arcadium or Eramet) are the most advanced. But the other options have their place to play, especially since each brine is specific and requires a tailor-made solution. Ecological imperatives, in particular that of saving fresh water (which is used to recover lithium captured in brines) in dry regions, can also favor certain technologies, while large producing countries like Chile want to protect their environment.
There remains a major uncertainty: in a lithium market in overproduction, the time is rather to tighten our belts than to produce at all costs. Prices of the white metal collapsed in 2023 and continued to fall throughout last year, approaching $10,000 per tonne of lithium carbonate in early 2025. Benchmark Minerals estimates they will average $10,400 dollars this year. Enough to make many projects unprofitable… including for the DLE
“We still have very competitive projects at this price», reassures Gabriel Toffani, who points out that the DLE can also intervene in battery recycling projects or in certain rock mines. Eramet, for its part, estimates the production cost of its factory at less than $5,000 per tonne… But that is without counting the construction of the factory. “The problem with DLE is that the initial investments [capex] are very important, therefore difficult to take and justify in a relatively low price environment», Judge Federico Gay. Which does not prevent counter-cycle bets.
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