Mangrove Lithium, a small startup that processes lithium has received a large infusion of funds from Bill Gates’ investment fund. Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) backed by the Microsoft founder invests in companies that offer cutting edge technologies that would lead to net-zero emission in future. Mangrove lithium has developed technology to produce battery-grade lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate.
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence predicts that there would be a shortage of 4.3 million tons of lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate by the year 2040. High-purity, battery-grade lithium, as is expected to be extracted using technology from Mangrove Lithium, will help in the rapid growth of EVs and could increase the number of EVs that are built in the next two decades.
According to a report by techcouver, Carmichael Roberts who is the co-lead of the investment committee at Breakthrough Energy Ventures said that transitioning to EVs was a critical step to reduce global warming that was caused by greenhouse gas emissions. He added that Mangrove’s technology solved a huge constraint in electrifying vehicles with the lowest-cost, highest-purity lithium hydroxide
Mangrove CEO, Saad Dara told CNBC that they took crude lithium and refined it to make it battery grade. In 2017, Dara and his colleagues began a company called Mangrove Water Technologies. With funds from the federal government in Canada they developed a desalination project in Western Canada, which is still functioning.
In 2018, a South American producer of lithium asked the firm if they could process lithium chloride to lithium hydroxide. Lithium chloride is mined while lithium hydroxide is used to make the battery for an electric vehicle (EV). Dara said that the technology used by Mangrove recovers 90 percent of lithium from brine or from the hard rock.
Ian Hayton, a materials and chemical analyst at the Cleantech Group said that current lithium extraction processes were able to extract “about 50 percent of the lithium” from brine or from the hard rock.
Mangrove is not the only lithium processor in which Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures has invested. Earlier in October, BEV announced that it had invested in Lilac Solutions, which is also a lithium extraction technology company.
