Lilac Solutions is pioneering a new type of lithium extraction that could double US production in two years and shake up the industry.
BOX ELDER COUNTY, Utah – On a bright afternoon in August, the shore on the North Arm of the Great Salt Lake looks like something out of a science fiction film set in a scorching alien world. The desert sun is blinding as it reflects off the white salt that gathers and crunches underfoot like snow at the water’s edge. In a part of the lake too shallow for boats, bacteria have turned the water a Pepto-Bismol pink. The landscape all around is ringed with jagged red mountains and brown brush. The only obvious sign of people is the salt-encrusted hose running from the water’s edge to a makeshift encampment of shipping containers and trucks a few hundred feet away.
This otherworldly scene is the test site for a company called Lilac Solutions, which is developing a technology it says will shake up the United States’ efforts to pry control over the global supply of lithium, the so-called “white gold” needed for electric vehicles and batteries, away from China. Before tearing down its demonstration facility to make way for its first commercial plant, due online next year, the company invited me to be the first journalist to tour its outpost in this remote area, a roughly two-hour drive from Salt Lake City.
