Exxon Mobil Corp plans to produce either battery-grade lithium carbonate or hydroxide from its new direct-lithium extraction (DLE) project in the Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas, depending on customer requirements for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) or nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) batteries, according to the company’s lithium global business manager.
“At the start of the [DLE] process, you’ve then got multiple choices: You can take it through to carbonate or you can take it through to hydroxide. We’re going to be driven by market decisions and customer discussions that we have,” Patrick Howarth said in an interview with Fastmarkets at the Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit in Little Rock, Arkansas, last week. “We’ve had a wide variety of input from the customers that we’ve spoken to – and we’ve spoken to a huge number – and I would say that there’s lots that are focused on LFP and there’s lots that are focused on the various flavors of NMC.”
LFP batteries – known for their stable, safe performance and cost-effectiveness despite their relatively lower energy density – are expected to take the largest market share in the next 10 years, followed by NCM batteries, according to Fastmarkets’ research. However, NCM will remain a key market, because original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the US and Europe are still interested in NCM as the answer to range anxiety.
Either way, “the facility will get to battery-grade [production], whether its carbonate or hydroxide,” Howarth said, though he declined to clarify exactly how many tonnes of lithium will be produced from the project.
To give a sense of scale, lithium from the site will power 1 million electric vehicles (EVs), but “what you should read into that is its multi-project potential,” according to Howarth.
“Depending on the assumptions of pack size and lithium content within the battery, you can have various different outcomes, but it’s multi-project potential,” he said.
ExxonMobil is evaluating different DLE technologies for its brine processing.
“Today in the market, there’s enough supply choice to enable us to get to market quicker,” Howarth said, as opposed to ExxonMobil developing its own in-house DLE technology.
However, the company does not plan to announce a DLE vendor “anytime soon,” he added.
