Revolutionary Lithium Extraction Technology
Patented, modular lithium extraction at the source that turns brine into battery-grade lithium - faster, cleaner, and more cost-effective than traditional mining.
Discover our lithium extraction technology
Rethinking Critical Mineral Supply
The status quo can’t keep up. Your assets can.
For decades, the plan for lithium has been remote, billion-dollar megaprojects: long lead times, heavy infrastructure, complex permitting, and concentrates shipped halfway around the world to be refined. That model is slow, fragile, and costly - and it won’t deliver the lithium the market needs.
Meanwhile, lithium-rich brines are already moving through your system.
Oilfield produced water and geothermal brines flow through your infrastructure every day. With the right technology, those “waste” streams become high-efficiency feedstocks for local, battery-grade lithium and other critical minerals - a new revenue line inside assets you already own.
Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) turns that flow into product - but DLE isn’t a box, it is a system. It must handle real-world brines, not just lab samples. We’re industrial water experts, not mining theorists, and we’ve built a patented, surface-based lithium extraction solution that runs on your brines.
We don’t sell you DLE equipment. We design, build, own, and operate lithium plants on your wastewater - and share the upside while we carry the headache.
Why rely on distant, high-cost sources when the solution is right here?
We’re building a modern critical-minerals platform that turns wastewater into local, sustainable, and cost-effective battery-grade lithium - the fastest route from resource to market.
Turning Wastewater into Lithium Revenue
We operate the lithium plant. You keep the upside.
Lithium Harvest produces battery-grade lithium chemicals from secondary brines like oilfield produced water and geothermal brines - right where those streams already flow and existing infrastructure already stands.
No multi-billion-dollar mines. No decade-long waits. Just modular, surface-based adsorption DLE integrated with proprietary water treatment to deliver local lithium chemicals on-site by design.
We work as your DBOO lithium partner. You provide the brine and site access. We design, build, and operate the plant, sharing the upside through revenue sharing or royalties.
Do you really want to become a lithium operator? Leave that to us. We handle extraction, refining, and offtake under a DBOO model, so you can add a new revenue line without requiring new teams, new expertise, or heavy CapEx on your balance sheet.
We transform your liability stream into one of the world’s most sustainable, lowest-cost local lithium supplies at industrial speed - and we handle the heavy lifting in design, construction, and day-to-day operations. You keep running your assets. We turn your brine into long-term lithium revenue.
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Monetize a Liability
Turn your brine from a cost and ESG issue into a new revenue line -
No Need to Become a Lithium Operator
We handle extraction, refining, offtake, and operations under a DBOO model -
Patented, Field-Proven Platform
Adsorption-based DLE + advanced water treatment, built from proven unit operations. -
Execution That Delivers
20+ years of industrial water, separation, and control-systems experience -
Built for Real-World Brines
Runs at industrial speed on low-grade, complex brines, not just clean lab samples
Our Process - From Brine to Bottom Line
Integration is our superpower - because real brines are never “lab clean”.
Most DLE players optimize a single “DLE box” and quietly struggle with real-world water chemistry. We don’t. Our process is built around the brine you actually have - low-grade, variable, and complex - not the cleaned-up lab version.
In DLE, success isn’t just about the extraction step. It’s about how you integrate everything upstream and downstream. We engineer the whole process, not just a “DLE box”. Pre-treatment, extraction, and refining are designed to work together to produce bankable, battery-grade products - not just pilot curves.
How it works in practice
- Collection: Produced water or geothermal brine is collected and directed to our co-located treatment facility.
- Advanced water treatment: We remove solids, hydrocarbons, and other contaminants using our proprietary filtration technology, creating the ideal conditions for high-yield lithium extraction.
- Lithium extraction: Lithium is efficiently extracted by DLE without using any chemicals.
- Lithium refining: Lithium is refined into battery-grade lithium carbonate.
Treated brine and process water are then managed through reinjection, reuse, or compliant disposal, integrated with your existing water systems.
The value isn’t just in recovering lithium - it’s in delivering qualified tonnes with minimal losses. That’s how we drive higher project value per ton.
Direct Lithium Extraction - But Different
At Lithium Harvest, our proprietary Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technology combines advanced adsorption methods with advanced water treatment, transforming oilfield wastewater and other lithium-rich brines into high-purity lithium.
We don’t just extract lithium - we rethink how it’s produced.
Our solution delivers the fastest, most cost-effective lithium production on the market while setting a new global benchmark for sustainability. Whether your brine comes from oil and gas operations or geothermal sources, our process turns waste into a strategic, revenue-generating resource.
Lithium Harvest Solution |
Traditional DLE |
Lithium Harvest Advantage |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Project implementation time | 12-18 months | 5-7 years | No drilling permits needed |
| Lithium feedstock | Produced water/geothermal brine | Continental brine | No asset acquisition |
| System design | Modular and mobile | Mobile / stationary | Unique modular design |
| Freshwater consumption per mt of LCE | 22,729 gallons | 26,417 gallons | Water recycling/reuse |
| CO₂ footprint per mt of LCE | Neutral | 2.5 tonne | Offsets CO₂ footprint from wastewater |
| Average invested capital per mt of LCE | $17,100 | $62,500 | No land acquisition, exploration, and drilling |
| Average cost per mt of LCE | $3,647 | $6,000 | Low energy technology |
Lithium Harvest Solution
Traditional DLE
Lithium Harvest Advantage
We Outpace Peers
Cleaner. Smaller. Cheaper. Faster.
Lithium Harvest Solution |
Traditional DLE |
Solar Evaporation Brine Extraction |
Hard Rock Mining |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lithium feedstock | Produced water/geothermal brine | Continental brine | Continental brine | Rock / spodumene |
| Project implementation time | 12-18 months | 5-7 years | 13-15 years | 10-17 years |
| Lithium carbonate production time | 2 hours | 2 hours | 13-24 months | 3-6 months |
| Lithium yield | >95% | 80-95% | 20-50% | 40-70% |
| Average footprint per mt of LCE | 61 ft² | 172 ft² | 39,352 ft² | 3,605 ft² |
| Environmental impact | Minimal | Minimal | Soil and water contamination | Soil and water contamination |
| Freshwater consumption per mt of LCE | 22,729 gallons | 26,417 gallons | 118,877 gallons | 20,341 gallons |
| CO₂ footprint per mt of LCE | Neutral | 2.5 tonne | 3.1 tonne | 20.4 tonne |
| Average invested capital per mt of LCE | $17,100 | $62,500 | $34,000 | $60,000 |
| Average cost per mt of LCE | $3,647 | $6,000 | $6,400 | $7,000 |
Lithium Harvest Solution
Traditional DLE
Solar Evaporation Brine Extraction
Hard Rock Mining
How Our Technology Performs in the Real World
Lithium Harvest is designed to outperform traditional lithium routes in what truly matters: emissions, footprint, water usage, capital, cost, and time to revenue.
The benchmarks below demonstrate how our surface-based DLE and DBOO model compares to evaporation, hard rock, and other DLE concepts - in terms that matter to your operations, ESG, and commercial teams.
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Zero-Carbon Operations (Scope 1 & 2)
We remove the big emitters: no blasting, no trucking, no acid calcination. By co-locating extraction and refining at the source, powering low-pressure equipment with clean energy (including geothermal energy where available), and avoiding emissions tied to oilfield wastewater disposal, Lithium Harvest can essentially eliminate Scope 1 and 2 CO₂ emissions from our lithium production.
What this means for your site:
- A lithium plant on your asset that supports your decarbonization and ESG targets
- Scope 3 and lifecycle benefits for the offtakers we sell to, attached to volumes coming from your operations
In our lifecycle analysis, lithium from our operations can reduce the EV greenhouse gas breakeven point by up to 5.7 times compared to batteries using conventionally mined lithium. Learn more here.
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Compact by Design - No Ponds, No Pits
Evaporation ponds sprawl across salt flats - tens of thousands of square feet per ton of LCE produced - while hard-rock pits, waste dumps, and tailings dams scar larger areas than the orebody itself. Our plants do not. Lithium Harvest’s facilities sit on compact pads next to produced water centers and geothermal plants and are up to 99% smaller than evaporation ponds and 98% smaller than open-pit mines.
No pits, no ponds, no long new roads or pipelines. Smaller pads = easier siting, faster permits, lower civil costs, and far less ecological and community disturbance.
What this means for your site:
- Easier integration into existing facilities
- Lower local impact and smoother stakeholder and community dialogue
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Minimal Freshwater Consumption
Evaporation consumes vast volumes of water. Hard-rock circuits often rely on chemical-intensive process water. Our adsorption-based DLE uses water as the working fluid for desorption instead of heavy chemical cocktails. Around 96% of the water remains within the DLE circuit, and 90% is recycled plant-wide, with no waste products.
We may use slightly more water than some hard-rock routes, but using water rather than complex chemistry reduces costs, lowers the freshwater intensity of evaporation, and remains competitive with other DLE technologies without the burden of hard-rock chemistry.
What this means for your site:
- A lithium plant that fits within tight water and permits constraints
- Water stress is a gating criterion for offtakers and sustainable bond buyers.
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Optimized Capital Footprint - Built to Reduce CapEx
Traditional lithium projects spend heavily before the first tonne is produced - earthworks, pits or ponds, long pipelines, new roads, and large conversion plants.
We take a different route.
Lithium Harvest places modular, surface-based plants on existing sites, using the infrastructure you already have: pads, power, roads, and water handling. No pits, no ponds, no long new pipelines. Modular trains are right-sized to your brine flow and built from a repeatable design, so more of the expenditure goes into productive capacity, not dirt and concrete.
What this means for you:
- Lower total capital required compared to greenfield ponds or hard-rock mines - less capital at risk, shorter build cycles, and faster payback
- Less site work and civil spending by using the land and infrastructure you already operate
- Scalable by design - start at a sensible scale and add modules as brine volumes and offtake grow, with expansions that can be funded mainly from operating cash flow
Lithium Harvest is in the lowest-cost decile compared to DLE peers, with up to 73% lower CapEx per ton of LCE than traditional mining routes.
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Cost Leadership in Lithium Production
Hard-rock and long-distance supply chains carry significant cost burdens: mining fleets, diesel haulage, 1,000°C kilns, multi-step conversion, and extensive logistics. Evaporation leaves a significant amount of lithium behind, resulting in wasted reagents and labor.
We run fully automated, low-pressure operations with short logistics, high lithium recovery, and minimal reagents after pretreatment. Fixed-price access to waste-stream brine removes the ore-price volatility seen in mining routes. The result is a structurally lower steady-state unit cost - in our benchmarking, up to 48% lower than traditional mining methods. Lithium Harvest operates well inside the bottom decile of peers’ operating costs with meaningful headroom to market-clearing price bands, positioning our plants for durable margins and disciplined growth.
What this means for you as a site partner:
- A plant on your asset designed to stay competitive even in weak price environments
- More resilient revenue share from lithium volumes that are built to keep running through the cycle
- For offtakers, we sell to: competitively priced, low-footprint lithium from your region, backed by a cost base designed to stay online when higher-cost supply shuts in
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Accelerated Project Timelines
Conventional lithium projects typically take 10-17 years (for hard rock) or 13-15 years (for evaporation) to reach nameplate capacity. We take a different route.
By leveraging existing produced-water and geothermal infrastructure, avoiding pits and ponds, and installing modular surface plants, we can transition from the final investment decision to the first commercial tonnes in approximately 12 to 18 months.
What this means for you:
- Near-term revenue share instead of decade-long development cycles
- Faster ESG impact from assets you already own
- A scalable template that can be rolled out across your broader portfolio
Why This Model Wins
Lithium Harvest vs traditional lithium mining - speed, cost, and sustainability in one package.
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Speed
Online in 12-18 months - up to 17x faster than greenfield mining -
Cost-Efficiency
Up to 73% lower CapEx and 48% lower OpEx -
Co-Benefits
Treated water can be reused or safely disposed, turning a cost center into new income -
Yield & Throughput
Hours-scale production cycles - up to 8,766x faster with up to 375% higher lithium yield for stronger project economics. -
Flexibility
Ability to produce from different feedstocks (oilfield water, geothermal brine, etc.) due to our adaptable process design -
Sustainability
Process designed for carbon-neutral operations - up to 81% lower freshwater use and up to 99% smaller land footprint
We’re Different from the Other 100 DLE Players
Not all DLE is created equal. Some teams sell media, some sell skids, some sell slides. We build and operate full plants that run on real brines, on real sites, with real economics.
Anyone can talk about direct lithium extraction. Very few can deliver it at scale, on complex brines, with bankable performance. You’re not just picking a technology - you’re choosing a partner, a cost curve, and a risk profile.
Our edge is a combination of protected process IP, a flow sheet purpose-built for wastewater brines, full-process water-treatment expertise, and an on-site DBOO model that keeps design, build, and operations in one hand. The result: plants that are faster to build, cheaper to run, and structurally hard to copy.
Explore the points below to see what truly sets Lithium Harvest apart in the DLE landscape.
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A Real, IP-Protected Moat - Full Process, not a “DLE Box”
Most DLE players focus on a single step or are still stuck in pilot mode. Lithium Harvest is different.
We own an IP-protected, end-to-end process for extracting lithium from wastewater, including pre-treatment, DLE, and post-treatment, all engineered for surface-level feedstock.
This is not generic DLE. It is a fully integrated, highly engineered process refined over decades of real-world industrial water operations.
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Industrial Water DNA - We’re Water Engineers, Not Mining Theorists
While most lithium startups are founded by geologists or financiers and struggle with scale-up, our team brings over 20 years of experience in water treatment deployment, having installed more than 400 full-scale systems across the oil & gas and industrial sectors. We’re already working with industry leaders, including partners that produce over 70,000 tons of lithium carbonate annually.
We have worked with every technology we use in our flow sheet, not in lab pilots, but in full-scale, high-uptime environments. That experience gives us unmatched expertise in:
- Conditioning complex brines to maximize lithium yield
- Control fouling, scaling, and other performance-killing risks
- Managing resin life, media performance, and system balance
- Integrating unit operations into a fully optimized, low-cost lithium extraction solution.
This deep operational knowledge enables us to achieve battery-grade consistency and project-level value where others typically struggle.
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Designed, Built, and Operated In-House
We don’t hand your project to a generic EPC and hope it all fits together. Our facilities are designed, engineered, built, and operated in-house under a Design-Build-Own-Operate (DBOO) model.
That gives you:
- Lower CapEx through lean, fit-for-purpose design
- Faster troubleshooting and performance tuning from the team that built the system
- Operational knowledge is kept inside the project, not lost in handovers
Most competitors must coordinate with multiple third parties, including tech vendors, EPCs, and operators, each with their own incentives and learning curves. That’s where projects often go off track. Our integrated model removes that friction.
Our model keeps cost discipline, operational control, and long-term performance in one place - so you gain a new revenue stream without becoming a lithium operator.
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Integration Is Our Superpower
In DLE, success is not just about the extraction technology - it is about how you integrate all the upstream and downstream steps. Poor pre-treatment or inadequate refining can ruin recovery rates or disqualify the product for battery use.
Many DLE players optimize the “DLE box” and underestimate the importance of pre- and post-treatment; we don’t. We have built our system to optimize every step - because the value lies not just in recovering lithium, but in qualifying product and minimizing losses at every step. That is why our partners capture more value per tonne of lithium from the same barrels of water they already handle.
Cleaner Lithium, Built for The Energy Transition
Traditional mining still supplies 89% of today’s lithium - and it’s too slow, too heavy, and too fragile for what comes next.
We know we’ve been throwing a lot of numbers at you. This is where they turn into real-world impact.
Hard rock and evaporation ponds are slow, costly, and resource-intensive. They create bottlenecks we can’t afford if we want to electrify faster and decarbonize at scale.
Below, you can see how Lithium Harvest compares key sustainability metrics when you replace pits and ponds with surface-based lithium extraction from wastewater. Every metric is calculated per tonne of LCE. Now multiply that by the millions of tonnes the energy transition will require - and you can do the math on what kind of lithium the world really needs.
Traditional Lithium Mining |
Lithium Harvest Solution |
Sustainability Advantage |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Lithium feedstock | Continental brine/spodumene | Produced water/geothermal brine | Taps unconventional brines already flowing through existing infrastructure - avoids new pits, evaporation ponds, and blasting while delivering the extra lithium the energy transition can’t obtain from conventional mines alone. |
| Project implementation time | 5-17 years | 12-18 months | up to 17× faster | Delivers lithium in time for this demand cycle, not the next one |
| Lithium carbonate production time | 2 hours - 6 months | 2 hours | up to 8,766× faster | Hours instead of months - less waste, less weather risk, more efficient use of land and water |
| Lithium yield | 20-95% | >95% | up to 375% higher | Gets more lithium from the same resource with less waste |
| Average footprint per mt of LCE | 172 ft² - 39,352 ft² | 61 ft² | up to 99% smaller | 243 parking spots - a whole parking garage saved for every tonne |
| Freshwater consumption per mt of LCE | 26,417 - 118,877 gallons | 22,729 gallons | up to 81% lower | Saves 1.5 million coffees worth of water each tonne |
| CO₂ footprint per mt of LCE | 2.5 - 20.4 tonne | Neutral | 100% lower | Avoids emissions equal to 4.4 passenger cars taken off the road for a whole year |
| Battery CO₂ (per EV) | 4.7 tonne | 2.0 tonne | 57% lower | Up to 57 % lower battery lifecycle emissions when our lithium is used |
| Lifetime EV CO₂ (per EV) | 16.9 tonne | 14.2 tonne | 16% lower | Makes EVs meaningfully cleaner over their lifetime vs ICE |
| GHG breakeven vs ICE | 11,335 mi/18,243 km | 1,982 mi/3,190 km | 5.72× sooner | EVs “win” on climate much sooner in real-world mileage, helping decarbonize faster |
Traditional Lithium Mining
Lithium Harvest Solution
Sustainability Advantage
One Platform. Multiple Industries. Maximum Impact.
Our extraction system isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution - it’s a modular platform engineered to handle multiple brine sources, delivering local, fast, cost-effective, sustainable lithium across the entire battery value chain.
We’re water experts first. That expertise lets us recover lithium from virtually any lithium-bearing liquid - today that’s produced water and geothermal brine; tomorrow it could be recycling leachates or new industrial effluents.
Bottom line: One platform, many feedstocks, one mission - provide sustainable lithium exactly where the energy transition needs it most.
Contact Us
Talk to us about your brine! Our team of water treatment and extraction experts is ready to outline potential project pathways and next steps.
