Alkali Labs
Unlocking $12B/yr of low-concentration lithium brines in the US
* Data source: Crunchbase
- Founded
- 2023
- Employees*
- 2-10
- Funding to Date*
- $275,000
- Website
- www.alkalilabs.com
"There are vast untapped domestic lithium reserves in saline groundwater that is unusable for agriculture and human consumption. By harnessing biology's ion chemistry we can extract enough lithium to fuel the renewable energy revolution."
A typical oil well can discard up to $40 worth of lithium-rich brine for every $100 of crude oil it produces.
AlkaLi Labs is working on a biological platform for the extraction of valuable minerals from unconventional water sources such as oilfield brine waste streams. A typical oil well can discard up to $40 worth of lithium-rich brine for every $100 of crude oil it produces. This represents 250k tons of Lithium that goes unexploited per year – because current extraction methods cannot work on these low-concentration oil-rich brines. AlkaLi’s approach can tap brines with ore grade as low as 50+ ppm, which most direct lithium extraction approaches (400+ ppm) cannot exploit. AlkaLi engineers microbes that thrive in the real brines from oil well disposal sites and supercharges their ability to bio-accumulate metals of interest.
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