Scientists just found a faster, cleaner way to extract lithium for EV batteries

The Salton Sea contains enough lithium to build more than 375 million electric vehicle batteries. Last week, ScienceDaily ran a Columbia Engineering press release under a familiar headline: a "faster, cleaner way to extract lithium." This week, EnergyX cut the ribbon on the first purpose-built direct lithium extraction plant in the United States. Both stories are about the same race — and they illustrate exactly how different the front of the pack looks from the lab bench.

The research behind last week's coverage, published in the journal Joule by a Columbia team led by Ngai Yin Yip, describes a process called switchable solvent selective extraction, or S3E. The method uses a temperature-sensitive amine solvent that pulls lithium ions from brine at room temperature and releases them when heated, with the solvent regenerating for reuse. In lab tests on synthetic brines modeled on Salton Sea conditions, S3E showed strong selectivity for lithium over sodium and potassium — roughly 10 times better for sodium, 12 times better for potassium — even when lithium was present at concentrations 1,000 times lower than competing ions. Magnesium, a common contaminant, dropped out as a hydroxide precipitate. After four cycles with the same solvent batch, the system recovered just under 40 percent of the available lithium.

Those are real results. They are also early ones. The paper states plainly that this is a proof-of-concept study and that the system has not yet been optimized for yield or efficiency. There are no cost projections, no energy consumption figures, and no capital expenditure estimates. The Columbia team is not claiming otherwise.

"The team emphasized that this is a proof-of-concept study," the press release notes. "The system hasn't yet been optimized for yield or efficiency." Rare, in my experience, to see scientists refuse their own adjectives. Someone let them keep the caveats.

But the rest of the press release — picked up by ScienceDaily on May 23 under headlines about a "faster, cleaner way to extract lithium" — reads like a funding announcement dressed as a deployment timeline. The research is genuinely interesting science. It is not a product. It is not a pilot. It is not close.

The commercial race it enters is already underway. EnergyX's Project Lonestar facility in Texas — the first DLE plant in the US to process locally sourced brine, commissioned March 26 and covered by Mining.com on May 21 — is producing roughly 250 metric tons per year of lithium carbonate equivalent at its demonstration scale. Controlled Thermal Resources, targeting mass production at the Salton Sea by the end of 2026, is currently taking delivery of steam turbines and generators from Fuji Electric. Berkshire Hathaway Energy Renewables, which operates 10 of the 11 geothermal plants in the Imperial Valley, is in demonstration phase and has partnered with Occidental on lithium extraction technology — the companies say their operation could eventually produce up to 90,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent per year, enough for 11 million EVs annually. Lilac Solutions, backed by a $145 million Series C and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, claims its ion exchange technology delivers 90 to 99 percent lithium recovery at commercial scale.

S3E's 40 percent recovery figure is meaningful for a system that hasn't been optimized — but it compares unfavorably to commercial DLE systems already running or commissioning. The selectivity over competing ions is the genuine advance; the recovery rate is a starting point. Whether S3E can be scaled economically, what the energy inputs look like, and what a full-scale system would cost remain open questions the paper doesn't answer. Yip's lab is asking for collaboration and licensing inquiries via a Google Form.

The gap between the paper and the press coverage is the story. S3E is worth watching. The Salton Sea lithium rush is already a story — messy, real, and happening now.