About Us

About Us

Enabling the electrification of everything.

ExSorbtion’s mission is to become the highest-value supplier of lithium to enable electrification of everything.

ExSorbtion has acquired and is commercializing a technology developed by SRI International. This technology portfolio includes patented sorbents that have demonstrated very high lithium selectivity, fast reaction time to adsorb lithium from the brine and to remove lithium from the sorbent.

The patented regeneration process uses carbon dioxide gas instead of acid (which is used by all other DLE companies) to extract the adsorbed lithium from the sorbents. By using gas instead of acid, ExSorbtion’s sorbents last >10x longer than competing manganese- and titanium-based sorbents – which is important since cost of the sorbent is >30% of the overall cost of goods sold for the DLE process, enabling potentially the lowest operating cost compared to other DLE process.

Additionally, since the process uses carbon dioxide gas for regeneration, the process basically acts as a carbon sink making it the greenest DLE process, while consuming only 23 tons of water for each ton of lithium carbonate produced which is >60% lower than competing DLE processes.

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Team

Anupam has been a part of over 20 startups as a founder, investor or founding team member in the materials, energy, manufacturing and technology space. Working with the team at these startups, Anupam has assisted in commercialization of 20+ products across the globe, has secured over $500 million in equity, debt and project financing for early/growth-stage companies and cleantech projects, and has helped set-up manufacturing and sales/distribution operations across the globe. Anupam has a Bachelors in Chemical Engineering from University of Mumbai and a Masters in Engineering Management from Case Western Reserve University.

Douglas Heller is the President and CEO of Sun Specialty Products, a company that specializes in nano-scale dispersion systems and suspension polymerization manufacturing techniques for producing millions of pounds of polymeric beads for a variety of applications. Mr. Heller is also a Partner in the Philadelphia-based private equity investment firm of Heller Hickox & Company.  Formed in 1991 with George K. Hickox, Jr., the firm invests partners’ capital by structuring and leading oil and gas equity investments involving recapitalizations, restructurings, start-ups, turn-arounds, workouts, and other special situations.

Over his 30-year career, Vladimir Chernyakov has led product sales for several companies in many countries, evaluated and invested in startups, initiated and negotiated strategic partnerships, and formulated and implemented product/corporate marketing strategy and commercial policy. Vladimir over the past decade has been involved with several early/growth stage companies across variety of industries including audiophile, solar energy, nanomaterials and electron beam metal additive manufacturing. Vladimir was the Managing Director of Solar Avenir, a GaAs solar panel startup, and Texent, an electron-beam based additive manufacturing technology. Vladimir has a Master’s degree from Vladivostok University and a Ph.D. from St. Petersburg State University in Russia.

Dr. Srinivas Bhamidi is an expert in organic synthesis and is supporting the CEC funded project for lithium recovery from geothermal brines. He is responsible for scaling up sorbent manufacturing process, large scale sorbent production, characterization and recycling. Before ExSorbtion, he was Senior Chemist at SRI International where he played a key role in development of and is the inventor of the DLE technology licensed by ExSorbtion. At SRI, Srinivas has also been involved in development of materials and processes to print lithium ion rechargeable batteries, modified electrode formulations and fabrication of batteries, formulating lithium polymer electrode batteries using carbon-based intercalation materials and lithium cobalt oxide, reversed surface texture change, display technology, applying thermally tunable coatings and controlling at pixel level, devised flame-retardant polyurethane foam materials, working on foam recipes, modifying formulations, and reducing density, increasing elasticity, and resisting chemicals and fire, synthesized polymerizable silonic liquids for traction-enhancing systems, utilizing for military use, created testing protocol for polysulfone membranes for high flux and salt rejection rates, purifying sea and brackish water, formulated polybenzimidazole (PBI)-based hollow fibers for CO2 gas separation from flue gases produced at integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants, reducing carbon dioxide emission and synthesized novel composite material for selective recovery of lithium from brines, patenting innovation and taking commercial.

Don Hains is an industrial minerals exploration and economic geologist with more than 30 years of experience in development, use and analysis of industrial minerals properties and materials. He has held product research and business development responsibilities with Fiberglas Canada Inc. and Domtar Construction Materials and has been consulting in the field of industrial minerals markets and economics for the past 30 years. His experience encompasses most of the industrial minerals and several specialty metals, especially antimony, lithium, tantalum, niobium, gallium, germanium and rare earths. Assignments have ranged from valuation reports to feasibility and market studies. He is a registered professional geoscientist in Ontario (#0494) and a Professional Member of the SME (#4175075). Don is the author of the Best Practice Guidelines for Reporting of Lithium Brine Resources and Reserves and a co-author of the Best Practice Guidelines for Reporting on Industrial Minerals Resources and Reserves. These guideline documents provide recommended best practice when reporting resources and reserves under NI 43-101.

John Burns has extensive experience in managing risk and financing resource projects in the exploration, development and production stages, in the Americas and across the globe. Previously, Mr. Burns served as a non-executive, independent director of China Gold International Resources (TSX, HKEX), the affiliate of China National Gold Group. He also previously served as Chairman of Athabasca Potash (TSX.V), as Chairman of Dolly Varden Silver (TSX.V), as a director of Corazon Gold (TSX.V), as Chairman of Titan Goldworx Resources (CNSX), and as Chairman of Northern Orion Explorations (TSX). Mr. Burns is former Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Drexel Burnham Lambert Commodity Group in New York, London and Chicago; former Managing Director and Global Head of the Derivative Trading and Finance Group of Barclays Metals Group, Barclays Bank PLC in London; and former Managing Director of Frontier Risk Management LLC, a grains and livestock focused CTA, in Chicago. Mr. Burns serves as lead director and an audit committee member for a number of private venture focused companies.

Investors & Partners

SRI International

SRI International is an independent, nonprofit research institute with a rich history of supporting government and industry to create and deliver world-changing solutions for a safer, healthier, and more sustainable future. For nearly 80 years, SRI researchers have led the discovery and design of groundbreaking products, technologies, and industries – collaborating across technical and scientific disciplines and bringing innovations to the marketplace through research as a service, spin-off ventures, new product solutions, and technology licensing. Whether it is through the development and creation of Arpanet, Siri, tele-robotics technologies, or cancer treatments, SRI innovations continue to deliver technology to address the world’s most complex and urgent challenges.  SRI International developed the DLE Technology that has now been acquired by ExSorbtion.

Hunt Energy Enterprises

Hunt Energy Enterprises reflects the culture and principles that have made Hunt one of the largest independent energy companies by embracing entrepreneurship, excellence, creativity, integrity, respect and teamwork. Hunt Energy Enterprises is one of the few companies known for its energy, power and investing practices. It knows the energy and power industries, the regulatory environments, and the industry, government, research and financial communities. Hunt Energy Enterprises aims to be a partner from which entrepreneurs in energy and power can gain resources, relationships and experience for their energy ventures. Hunt Energy Enterprises was an early investor in the DLE technology development at ExSorbtion.

Sun Specialty Products

Sun Specialty Products has a long and successful history of scaling and commercializing numerous cost-effective, value-added technologies in the energy sector for the benefit of our customers and partners.  Sun’s manufacturing and technical expertise were developed specifically for, and are centered around, highly engineered nano-composite polymeric material systems.  Specifically, the company specializes in nano-scale dispersion systems and suspension polymerization manufacturing techniques, allowing them to produce millions of pounds of polymeric beads annually.  Sun has been doing this for nearly 30 years at its facility in suburban New Orleans while others have substantially moved their manufacturing assets to other countries.  Sun’s technical expertise and manufacturing capacity allows Sun to quickly scale high quality sorbent production for ExSorbtion.