There is a reason why we see a lot of Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) lab and pilot scale units but nothing in large scale production yet. For DLE to be an economically viable solution, all three ingredients (long sorbent life, fast adsorption and regeneration, and high selectivity and uptake) of the DLE triangle need to be present, which is not the case with almost all DLE technologies.

A sorbent that lasts only 30 cycles will have to be replaced over ~50 times every year, and at a cost of ~$10M for every batch. Just replacing the sorbent 50 times would cost $500M just in annual costs, which probably is viable if Lithium sells for $70,000/ton, however if we want to drive electrification globally, lithium needs to sell at a price that is 5-10x lower. And for this to happen, the sorbents need to last a lot longer (>500 cycles in ExSorbtion’s case), the adsorption and regeneration time needs to be a lot faster (<5 minutes in ExSorbtion’s case) and the sorbents need to have high selectivity and uptake (90% and up to 16mg/g in ExSorbtion’s case).