An English company aiming to recover lithium from domestic waste streams has won £3 million of public grant funding for a three-year, £6 million demonstration project expected to start in April, 2027.
Watercycle Technologies says the funding from the UK government’s £4 billion DRIVE35 program Scale Up Fund would go towards a pilot-to-demonstration-scale lithium production facility using its proprietary direct lithium extraction and crystallisation technology. The Manchester-based firm is leading a Recover, Refine, Recharge: Scaling Lithium Extraction from Wastewater for UK Battery Production (ReLiVE) project.
Watercycle said an operational system would aim to recover lithium from sources that would otherwise be treated as waste, including industrial wastewater and battery recycling materials. It was the first company to commercialise direct lithium extraction (DLE) in Europe, recovering high-purity lithium from brines, wastewater and battery waste while generating clean water as a co-product.
“By bringing recovery and refining together, ReLiVE aims to demonstrate a circular route to producing battery-grade lithium domestically while simultaneously treating wastewater and recovering valuable critical minerals that would otherwise be lost,” the company said.
“The UK currently has no significant domestic lithium refining capacity and remains heavily reliant on imported lithium chemicals.”
A 2020 start-up, Watercycle says its mission is to design and build “end-to-end mineral recovery and water treatment systems fit for a circular economy”.
