Weardale Lithium, an innovative natural resources development company based in County Durham, has secured a unanimous resolution to grant planning permission from Durham County Council to build the 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 tonnes per annum 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 expected currently approved to produce battery grade lithium carbonate on-site. Continuous flow trials are a key differentiator as it enables 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.
Weardale Lithium has already made the first steps towards the development of the demonstration plant with the recent awarding of a contract to multinational firm, KBR Inc. (‘KBR’) (NYSE:KBR), to provide technology licensing and proprietary engineering design for Weardale Lithium’s plant. The proprietary engineering design is based upon an integrated technology offering which has already successfully produced battery-grade lithium carbonate from Weardale Lithium’s brine at pilot scale, combining KBR’s PureLi¨ technology with Geolith SAS’ Li-Capt¨ DLE technology.
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.
Stewart Dickson, CEO of Weardale Lithium, said: ‘This is a significant milestone for Weardale Lithium and the UK’s electrification ambitions. The project aligns with the UK Governments Critical Minerals Strategy and Battery Strategy, which recognises lithium as essential to the energy transition and meeting increasing demand for battery-grade lithium carbonate from the growth of electric vehicles (EVs) and battery energy storage systems (BESS).
This planning approval for the UK’s largest lithium extraction plant is a notable step to establishing a robust, long-term and economically viable supply chain of critical minerals. The North East is well placed to be a centre of growing domestic lithium production capability as the region has all the requisite enablers to deliver our borehole to battery strategy.
With planning approval granted, we can now move forward and scale-up confidently producing battery-grade lithium carbonate on site using a proven end-to-end process. This will make a significant contribution to the transition of the UK towards a carbon-zero economy.
We are grateful for the support from Durham County Council in resolving to grant our application and the parish councils and local communities in Weardale who have overwhelmingly backed our plans to regenerate the Eastgate site and utilise the area’s natural resources in a sustainable and sensitive way that benefits all.’