The U.S. could become a major supplier of lithium for batteries in the next few years after the Trump administration took a stake in the developer of a massive mine in Nevada. But Silicon Valley startup Lilac Solutions thinks it’s got a better idea that avoids the higher costs and environmental harms of traditional mining: extract the pricey mineral from briny water at oil fields and sites like the Great Salt Lake in Utah instead of digging it out of the ground.

Oakland-based Lilac, which has been refining its patented ion-exchange technology for lithium extraction since its founding nearly a decade ago, is raising $250 million to build its first commercial processing facility at the Great Salt Lake that could produce 5,000 metric tons of lithium per year by 2028. If all goes well, that’s just the start as the company looks to help energy companies pull lithium out of massive underground brine deposits that are often a byproduct of active oil and gas fields across the U.S., such as the Smackover Formation, the remnant of an ancient sea that stretches from Texas to Florida, according to CEO Raef Sully.

Compared to the amount of lithium that can be pulled from conventional mines, “brine is probably orders of magnitude larger,” Sully told Forbes.

“It's a much smaller environmental footprint. You're not leaving a huge open-cut mine behind.”

Brine projects in the Smackover region that companies such as Standard Lithium, ExxonMobil and Chevron are developing promise to yield hundreds of thousands of tons of lithium annually. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated in a study last year there could be up to 19 million tons of lithium in the Smackover in Arkansas alone. “We estimate there is enough dissolved lithium present in that region to replace U.S. imports of lithium and more,” said USGS hydrologist Katherine Knierim, the study’s principal researcher.

Despite the Trump administration’s dramatic reversal of federal efforts to curb climate change, including killing incentives for electric vehicle purchases, demand for lithium for batteries is on the rise. Globally, the lithium market was worth an estimated $28 billion last year and demand could increase 26% to nearly 1.5 million tons this year, according to Mining.com. That’s driven mainly by growing EV sales, the top battery user........

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