And he is only 34yo! Very bright guy, he called me personally after I invested! Still waiting on that from Cook, Bezos and Zuckerberg! I'm happy with him in charge!
The sums are as follows (assuming I understand it correctly): 1000 ppm of Li in Brine. Molecular weight of water is 18g per mole. So there are 55 550 moles of water in 1000kg of water. At 1000 ppm, there is 55.55 moles of Li per 1000 litre of Brine (more or less assuming the rest of the ingredients are not too significant). Molecular weight of Li is 6.94 g per mole. This means the weight of the 55.55 moles of Li is 385.5 grams. This means 385.5 grams at 100% efficiency of extraction. If you apply the 90% extraction yield, then it is 347 g of Li per 1 000 litres of Brine. This is quite some way off the 1kg claimed? I hope my sums are wrong, because some is... Anyway, cost of battery grade Li (not sure if the Li extracted from the Brine is already at Battery grade or if further processing is required) is USD 37 000 per ton or 0.037 USD per gram. Multiply this with 347 g per 1000 litre of Brine and you extract USD 12.84 per 1000 Litre of Brine processed. However at a concentration 200 ppm of Li in the Brine (which is closer to actual as he mentions in the video), this reduces to USD 2.56 per 1000 kg of Brine processed. SO to decide if this is a good investment, one needs to understand the cost to extract vs the value extracted of this process as compared to other processes. No idea if this is better or worse, but I would not invest purely based on some basic statements/facts provided. It is possible that this much better than other techniques, but then the facts supporting this claim must be published.
Very nice back of the napkin calculation. This is exactly why they currently need massive ponds with free solar energy for evaporation of solvent, due to the sheer quantities needed to turn a profit.
I've been lucky enough to put in to both rounds of crowd funding for EngeryX. Honestly, I put in as much as I could afford to spare in to this company over a year ago and just a few months ago. The process is astounding.
Did he discuss the profitability of the process? It doesn't matter how efficient the process is if it cost more to run the process than the value of the results. I'm asking because I had this on the background and don't want to re-watch the whole thing
Not that I'm aware of. I've been following EnergyX for over a year now and that has never come up. My investment in the company is more along the lines of the how clean the process is and the innovation.
I also invested. I forget exactly when, but seems like a couple years ago. Sold a little bit of Tesla stock to do it. Definitely a long term investment. EnergyX checks some boxes. Growth industry, apparently very good corporate technology and importantly, a gifted founder CEO. Tesla checked those same boxes back when I invested in them.
Lithium brines have been found under Dartmoor in Southwest England. Extraction uses two bore holes. The brines are pumped out, lithium extracted and the remaining brine is pumped back in. Dartmoor is intrusion of granite into rocks that were laid down and folded between 500 and 250 million years again. The area is famous for tin mines, copper mines, lead mines, ball clay (pottery) and China clay (fine pottery).
It's seems that Elon was right when he said Lithium is everywhere and that more refining is needed. Thanks for the info and I read something similar every week.
Teague is impressive. He has no background in science and engineering but he hustled and pretty much learnt the entire process to such a detail to give such a confident explanation to someone like Sandy and not have any scientist or engineer in the background to help him out. Quite an impressive personality, honestly.
I was already impressed how he was able to describe the whole process in such simple terms I could understand everything. Then I learned he has no science/engineering background, so I was extra impressed that he had done his homework so thoroughly. He's not just some talking head owner/CEO, I think he contributes alot even when the technology is not his handwriting. A right man in a right position for sure.
This gives me the same vibe as Trevor Milton and Nikola. Someone took basically the same process Elon mentioned in Battery day, start a company, slap X in the name, make logo similar to SpaceX logo and start funding round. Well, I think I will wait couple of years. It worked with Nikola, will work with EnergyX.
I enjoyed the show. I was brought up in the suburbs of Syracuse New York, which is also known as salt city. At one time, Syracuse was the largest producer of salt in the United States. There is still a lot of briney water below the surface. I don’t know the Lithium levels, but perhaps worthy of testing. There is a company making gourmet table salt from it. Just passing a long info.
He is correct. The oceans do have lithium in it. And while it is not profitable to process sea water for lithium, It is perfectly feasible to piggy back this technology on a desalination installation where the primary objective is the creation of fresh water.
Desal waste is concentrated brine, but mostly sodium, some potassium, trace rest. Starting from higher proportion of lithium likely useful. This process leaves last 10% of lithium - indicates how difficult it gets with low proportions. Still way better than evaporation ponds. PS. I’d like to see potassium salts extracted too, if it’s abundant. For agriculture.
Great technology and Brines are definitely the way to produce Lithium in the Americas. 2 other companies in a very similar space using Direct Lithium Extraction (D.L.E) are Cleantech Lithium in Chile (Using Sunrun Resins) and Standard Lithium in the USA (Using Koch industries Resins)
Whatever your opinions on electric vehicles or batteries it’s awesome to get an inside look like this. Let alone from the founder, seems like a good guy.
CORRECTION ON APPROXIMATE MASS: 1000ppm of lithium brine with 90% extraction, would yield 0.35 kg of pure lithium, or 1.2 kg of lithium hydroxide, assuming the mass of all else in solution is negligible. Reason for error: They forgot to take into account the difference in the molar mass of the different chemicals. DISCLAIMER: This is unconfirmed and I don't know their methods beyond this video. Please correct me if I made a mistake.
I think the businessman should not have answered the technical question of how many kilos of Lithium you get from 1000 liters of saline. With the ratio in particles of 1:1000 you have to take into account the low weight of Lithium. Sandy rightly noted that. 1 liter of Lithium weighs just over 0.5 kg.
Never doubted Sandy's honesty. Despite the highly aggressive monetization & his obvious pain when parting with a Buck, I have never once thought he might sell his opinion, and his decision to put his money where his mouth is makes this more believable. However, given the history of lazer hydrogen discs, Quantumscape, Nikola & that Vietnamese car thing, I'll reserve judgement. Even Cathy Woods picks better than Sandy. Godspeed, EnergyX.
I'm working in northern Quebec and its booming with lithium up here. you can find it most places you look on the ground even. The influx of money for exploration is great, the infrastructure has been built for x amount of people and there are 10 times as many people using them , so thats a bit frustrating at times but the money is slowly upgrading the services.
It would have been nice to hear more about the planned licensing. There are a small number of companies in the world in the lithium extraction business, so selling the full commercial plant to all of them would not amount to much profit or any growth potential. Maybe I missed it, but I have to assume that the licensing might be on a royalty type fee per units of lithium extracted. In addition, that fee needs to be carefully set so as to not motivate producers to find an alternative. Regardless of where battery technology goes in the materials used, lithium is highly likely to be at the center for a long time to come. The least expensive process to make it wins. I assume one of the pilots will be at Salton Sea.
As someone who's had a long career in the water space, I was immediately impressed with the use of electrodialysis. If they need help in that area I can point you towards experts in that technology. I also have no technical degree, but am very versed in electrochemical separation technologies.
Ah yes. The CEO Teague Egan was interviewed by the Fully Charged show founder Robert Llewellyn earlier this year and I was very impressed with his approach.
Thanks for the video and info. on the lithium extraction process. I've invested in you company & am super excited to see the growth in your/our company!!!
Did anyone else think the numbers seemed to change back and forth? How often are you going to be working with a brine containing 1000ppm? At first he said hundreds of ppm - possibly 1200 or 1500 (which - again, how often?) - and then the ~90k acre location is expected to produce 400ppm. Then at the end he is doing math on a fictional 1000ppm. Looking at the multiple settling tanks(ponds, whatever) - I just wondered how large these would need to be in a production system to feed those filter system at the rate he claimed? I thought he said they were planning to license the process - then at the end he says they have bought ~90k acres. Also - the idea that it is clean? Why do we think its clean? We weren't told anything about the chemicals being used. I never claimed to be brilliant (maybe I revealed as much above) - but the whole way through I just kept feeling like I was being sold all the good points. How about the down sides - there has to be some. There seems to be a LOT of debt tied up in this and, as yet, no actual method to produce a profit. Also - is this actually new? Pretty sure this idea is being tested by a number of companies in different parts of the world... and so far none of it has gotten to a full production scale.
You misunderstood the discussion about enormous settling ponds ... those are what are used in the existing process for extracting lithium from brine not what is required for the energyX process. They were an example of why their process is much better.
I've been wondering what is up with Energy X for awhile and this very open tour and interview clarifies a great deal. Maybe time to invest. Thanks Sandy. I like that you are broadening the scope in the overall EV tech industry.
All this sounds awesome , but like the extraction of oil and shale, no one ever asked the question, what purpose does such element serve within the earth? as in.. before we go taking it out the ground shouldn't we know how the earth utilizes this material, because I personally believe that crude oil in many ways acts as somewhat of a coolant within the crust of the earth preventing additional heat from reaching the surface. Heat that contribute to global warming. Needless to say that oil also contains co2 that's extracted when burned. so what purpose does lithium serve, because as it exists, and exists in abundance it must serve a purpose, and hopefully we don't end up only figuring that purpose out too late.
I disagree strongly with Sandy on his opening statement. Investing in commodity mining/extraction companies is a bad idea IMHO. They are highly competitive and become a race towards the bottom very quick. You can make good money if you invest in a private start up and sell your shares after an IPO when it's stock price rallies with new money from public investors buying into the hype. But you will not make money if you hold their stock long after the company goes public and it tanks after each quarterly report. Lithium is far too abundant to be the "new gold". It's like trying to ammass a fortune by investing in iron ore mining companies. Lithium prices are falling and as more companies enter the game and develop better mining techniques lithium supply will continue to increase and the prices will fall and companies will be raising more and more capital and pushing towards smaller profit margins to be one of these few companies to survive. Like other increasingly more abundant commodities, holding lithium itself will not be a good store of value like gold and other rare earth metals traditionally was.
The inverse, or correct practices of that is the reason why the examples of success are significant, Mergers and Aquisitions can go either way, bringing the best and inadequate for purpose practices together so that skilled Entrepreneurs can sort them out. The proof of the pudding is not the legal protection plan of licenses and patents. It is better efficiency and effective products, as is repeated now for the world's leading corporations.
THERE ARE LOTS Of miners in the Chile/Argentina region. If this company truly has technology and processes to extract brine minerals immediately and pump the water back into the well rather than wait 1.5yrs and let it evaporate into the air in the desert then they might have something here and be successful. Environmental regulations would really push for that water to be put back into the ground immediately.
The advantage of waiting 1,5 years is, that the energy for processing is delivered by the sun for free. Where is the advantage of this new (50 years old) process?
Very interesting videos. Deep inside looks are my favourite and don't dumb it down, be real and show as many scientific professionals as possible. We want to learn something. 💕
And most systems were not running. Felt kind of strange. I would definitely have asked many more hardball questions than Sandy if my money was at stake ! 🤔
“extracted lithium shown?” 37:40 - the stack where the lithium chloride to lithium hydroxide is shown, in a few different sizes. I did not see the lithium hydroxide on the tail end of the membrane processing.
Thanks for this great in depth look Sandy! I've already invested in this company in their investment round last year and this year. I'm super excited for what this company can accomplish, and it's great that you've recognized the same potential!
What about the lake in the USA that the FED government has now concluded there to be enough Lithium to make 275,000,000 car batteries!? Just heard that info this week Sandy.
@MunroLive a very well done video tour. I've been curious about this company and their process for awhile now, and you covered many of the questions I had about it. There are a few that were not covered, and if possible, would like to hear answers to them. For example, with the resins & reagents used, is it all reusable materials or does any of it need to be treated as waste? What is the typical purity range of the final product? What is the overall energy budget for building 1000mg of purified lithium hydroxide?
Interesting. Kinda looks like a Nikola, but with an Arcimoto twist. Could be good, but all the "proprietary" stuff is all just variations on long used processes. The new "hook" is the "green narrative" of putting the brine back in the well. Good luck to all. Maybe one of Sandy's investment ideas will finally come to fruition when they go public in a year or two (at least for a short time, hopefully longer than any stock sales embargo lasts). Sandy may have found a cool friend at ONE, but that's just another "dead company walking", like Arcimoto, who is certainly not having any FUN. Teague has obviously been impressed by "Branding" (did you visit the restroom and find Energy X embossed toilet paper?). 😁
@@OOpSjm Buyout highly unlikely for several reasons, including the current investors and the thinking that you can make much more $$$ with an IPO, especially with the magic word Lithium!
@@rogerstarkey5390- that is a huge double win!!! ❤️ Later on, these same wells can be used to extract other minerals, using the same process, as they are needed! ❤️❤️ Each former oil well becomes a precious mineral mine for the future! ❤️❤️❤️
So what I gather is the point is processing brine in a closed system to avoid environmental pollution, and at 1kg/1000l brine, this is economically feasible.
This process sounds a lot like the idea presented at Tesla battery day. Also it’s ironic that Teague chose the name EnergyX. I’m impressed with the presentation and wish him a highly successful journey
🙋♂️ THANKS SANDY,FOR BEING FORTHRIGHT WITH YOUR VIEWS AND OPINIONS…NOT A PROBLEM FOR THOSE WHO ARE HERE TO LEARN 🧐 WHAT IS COMING AND MUNRO TEAM FOR PRODUCING IT 🤗👍💚💚💚
Welcome to the Investor group ! I jumped on board after seeing this company and Now you know with Jess and Zac, went there a while back and got in while it was .81 cents a share ! This will be something big in 5 years.
I like the fact this was the real lab, not some PR-show-whatever. How do you know the difference? In the PR-show thing, there's lots of shiny, expensive looking equipment, it's clean. Here, bunch of plastic buckets, cheap furniture, tangles of hoses… 👍
I'm interested to know if it's profitable to use this on the brine waste from a desalination plant. That seems to be a highly concentrated source of salts distributed around the world.
Interesting question. I actually asked Teague this very question in a live event he had at that time, about a year ago, and he said no, there was no lithium in the byproduct of desalination.
@@TheWoodStroker Interesting. I wonder why. If the concentration in sea water is around 1%, it stands you reason it would be higher in the waste brine. But maybe the filters don't reject lithium, so the low concentration winds up in the fresh water side.
It’s definitely interested. There seems to be things withheld. It almost seems to good to be true. I don’t know, I have my doubts on how cleaner or better this way is. I hope it’s true and successful.
why, this level 200 chemistry, I don’t understand why everyone is so blown away. A Nobel price for chemistry was given out in 1986 or there abouts for cyclic ether chromatography resins that could discriminate between different atomic radii of cation. Obviously the work done even earlier, in the 60s’. Check out “crown ethers” on Wikipedia, helpful skematics. The Oxygen atoms face the inside of the doughnut and have a partial negative charge, they hold on to the positively charged cation. The tightest ring only fits Lithium, the smallest of the cations. Slightly larger will fit Na (sorry, sodium); larger still potassium… and so on.
Tesla opened a Lithium mining and refining laboratory much earlier this year(or maybe it was last year). How does Tesla do mining and refining of Lithium? Do they have the same technology?
They ALL use graphite no matter what the battery is made of. As a consequence, the manganese dissolution does not only lead to capacity and power fading at the cathode, but also influences the SEI composition at the anode. In fact, an analysis of aged LiMn2O4/graphite cells via EIS revealed that the increased impedance at the graphite anode is largely contributing to the capacity fading of such lithium-ion cells.
If you are pumping back the brine which has had the lithium extracted, surely the new brine you are pumping out has now been diluted and has a lower lithium content?
I would assume the business case here is to sell the process to other businesses (license the IP) that actually do the mining. If the increase in yeld more then makes up for the license cost they will make plenty of money.
0.2 ppm in seawater, means you May extract 0.2 gr from 1000l water. I doubt thats is an economic source. Nevertheless If every plant is equipped IT could be 19000 tons per day. According to Google Numbers.
Good question, I would say yes so Saudi Arabia might want one of those plants. Also, other nations maybe SA might want to sell to some of their neighbors. Batteries for their solar systems and they could run those plants.
1 Kg of lithium from 1 cubic meter of of brine? I doubt his numbers. He started the company when lithium was really sky high, look at it now, save your money.
Did he discuss the profitability of the process? It doesn't matter how efficient the process is if it cost more to run the process than the value of the results. I'm asking because I had this on the background and don't want to re-watch the whole thing
Great chance to learn something. The fresh water used to tense the resin is recycled with 80-90% reusable in their system. At industrial scale, how many 1,000 of gals of “contaminated water” 10-20%- is expended in the process? Does that 10-20% also get pumped into the underground brine layer? Is this a clean almost closed system that all is within the area of the brine underground layer? How much fresh water is drawn from local ground water?
LFP and sodium batteries both seem destined to be very common in transportation so anyway interesting to see what may happen after that however ascertained too!?🤯
IMHO this is not a high growth rate company because of the regulatory, capital, and construction headwinds to be encountered in profitably building and ramping lithium production facilities to competitive industrial scale outputs. I hope they succeed, and also hope they develop the agility and bandwidth to profitably and concurrently extract and process other minerals from brine.
![FNAF vs TF2 - Episode 2 [SFM]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/z5b3V2-VLb0/mqdefault.jpg)
I appreciate the straight forward upfront notice of conflict of interests. Thank you.
To avoid Milton fear please have an independent verification. Let a chemist assay multiple m^3 samples and then follow them to see Li kg yield.
My spidy senses are on edge. An independent verification would sure put confidence behind the claims
Yup
These are all reasonable claims with the methods discussed. Solvent extraction and resin separators do exactly that.
Yeh... it wouldnt be the first time a business has completely BULLSHITTED their capability.
Exactly what I was thinking. Looked at comments to see if I was not the only one thinking of Trevor
Shout out to Teague as a great speaker. Very clear explanation, minimum number of filling words, rate of speech. Enjoyed the video!
Glad you enjoyed it!
And he is only 34yo! Very bright guy, he called me personally after I invested! Still waiting on that from Cook, Bezos and Zuckerberg!
I'm happy with him in charge!
The sums are as follows (assuming I understand it correctly):
1000 ppm of Li in Brine.
Molecular weight of water is 18g per mole. So there are 55 550 moles of water in 1000kg of water.
At 1000 ppm, there is 55.55 moles of Li per 1000 litre of Brine (more or less assuming the rest of the ingredients are not too significant).
Molecular weight of Li is 6.94 g per mole. This means the weight of the 55.55 moles of Li is 385.5 grams.
This means 385.5 grams at 100% efficiency of extraction. If you apply the 90% extraction yield, then it is 347 g of Li per 1 000 litres of Brine. This is quite some way off the 1kg claimed? I hope my sums are wrong, because some is...
Anyway, cost of battery grade Li (not sure if the Li extracted from the Brine is already at Battery grade or if further processing is required) is USD 37 000 per ton or 0.037 USD per gram. Multiply this with 347 g per 1000 litre of Brine and you extract USD 12.84 per 1000 Litre of Brine processed.
However at a concentration 200 ppm of Li in the Brine (which is closer to actual as he mentions in the video), this reduces to USD 2.56 per 1000 kg of Brine processed.
SO to decide if this is a good investment, one needs to understand the cost to extract vs the value extracted of this process as compared to other processes. No idea if this is better or worse, but I would not invest purely based on some basic statements/facts provided.
It is possible that this much better than other techniques, but then the facts supporting this claim must be published.
Very nice back of the napkin calculation. This is exactly why they currently need massive ponds with free solar energy for evaporation of solvent, due to the sheer quantities needed to turn a profit.
one of the best comments on YT ever...
that’s one way to display your smarts.
I've been lucky enough to put in to both rounds of crowd funding for EngeryX. Honestly, I put in as much as I could afford to spare in to this company over a year ago and just a few months ago. The process is astounding.
Did he discuss the profitability of the process? It doesn't matter how efficient the process is if it cost more to run the process than the value of the results.
I'm asking because I had this on the background and don't want to re-watch the whole thing
Not that I'm aware of. I've been following EnergyX for over a year now and that has never come up. My investment in the company is more along the lines of the how clean the process is and the innovation.
@@yogiyoda Sandy came, saw, evaluated, invested. Need more?
@@1voluntaryist - Sandy's a good engineer and wants to do good for future generations. Not sure what kind of investor he is
I also invested. I forget exactly when, but seems like a couple years ago. Sold a little bit of Tesla stock to do it. Definitely a long term investment.
EnergyX checks some boxes. Growth industry, apparently very good corporate technology and importantly, a gifted founder CEO. Tesla checked those same boxes back when I invested in them.
Innovation in these sectors ... definitely needed.
Lithium brines have been found under Dartmoor in Southwest England. Extraction uses two bore holes. The brines are pumped out, lithium extracted and the remaining brine is pumped back in. Dartmoor is intrusion of granite into rocks that were laid down and folded between 500 and 250 million years again.
The area is famous for tin mines, copper mines, lead mines, ball clay (pottery) and China clay (fine pottery).
It's seems that Elon was right when he said Lithium is everywhere and that more refining is needed. Thanks for the info and I read something similar every week.
And ponies. everyone forgets the ponies.
Yes, I saw a video ... probably on Fully Charged ... about this
... as well as for HM Prison Dartmoor!
I am joking... I know about Cornish Lithium and their thrilling project.
Thank you for being transparent. I appreciate it.
Teague is impressive. He has no background in science and engineering but he hustled and pretty much learnt the entire process to such a detail to give such a confident explanation to someone like Sandy and not have any scientist or engineer in the background to help him out. Quite an impressive personality, honestly.
I was already impressed how he was able to describe the whole process in such simple terms I could understand everything. Then I learned he has no science/engineering background, so I was extra impressed that he had done his homework so thoroughly. He's not just some talking head owner/CEO, I think he contributes alot even when the technology is not his handwriting. A right man in a right position for sure.
his father sold a car rental company for 625M usd...
This gives me the same vibe as Trevor Milton and Nikola. Someone took basically the same process Elon mentioned in Battery day, start a company, slap X in the name, make logo similar to SpaceX logo and start funding round. Well, I think I will wait couple of years. It worked with Nikola, will work with EnergyX.
Yes smokes and mirrors true but necessary
Teague actually started EnergyX in 2018, a few years before Elon mentioned it in Battery day.
My impression, too.
Yep totally...😂😂
@@Jason-ld9ssdoesn't mean he didn't hear about it through the grape vine. Elon didn't just come up with the idea on battery day..😂😂😂
I have been an investor of EnergyX for 3 years now and now having Sandy Munro attached is huge to me.
Same! Very happy to see this!
What did you pay per share when you invested?
$4.00
Another great application for EDR filtration. A much overlooked technology originally developed in the late 50's.
I enjoyed the show. I was brought up in the suburbs of Syracuse New York, which is also known as salt city. At one time, Syracuse was the largest producer of salt in the United States. There is still a lot of briney water below the surface. I don’t know the Lithium levels, but perhaps worthy of testing. There is a company making gourmet table salt from it. Just passing a long info.
He is correct. The oceans do have lithium in it. And while it is not profitable to process sea water for lithium, It is perfectly feasible to piggy back this technology on a desalination installation where the primary objective is the creation of fresh water.
I agree and other salts may prove to have value also. Presently those concentrated brines are pumped back out into the oceans.
Desal waste is concentrated brine, but mostly sodium, some potassium, trace rest.
Starting from higher proportion of lithium likely useful.
This process leaves last 10% of lithium - indicates how difficult it gets with low proportions.
Still way better than evaporation ponds.
PS. I’d like to see potassium salts extracted too, if it’s abundant. For agriculture.
Graphene enters the chat...
Thx for being Upfront ! Yes indeed Batteries are big ! Ive got solar and have $7,000 in them and need more storage.
Yes, after doing some research I definitely am looking forward to the documentary.
I personally loved the documentary on Theranos.
Great technology and Brines are definitely the way to produce Lithium in the Americas. 2 other companies in a very similar space using Direct Lithium Extraction (D.L.E) are Cleantech Lithium in Chile (Using Sunrun Resins) and Standard Lithium in the USA (Using Koch industries Resins)
Whatever your opinions on electric vehicles or batteries it’s awesome to get an inside look like this. Let alone from the founder, seems like a good guy.
I hope Sandy will send updates on Energy X as they progress, just like he did with Aptera!
CORRECTION ON APPROXIMATE MASS:
1000ppm of lithium brine with 90% extraction, would yield 0.35 kg of pure lithium, or 1.2 kg of lithium hydroxide, assuming the mass of all else in solution is negligible.
Reason for error: They forgot to take into account the difference in the molar mass of the different chemicals.
DISCLAIMER: This is unconfirmed and I don't know their methods beyond this video. Please correct me if I made a mistake.
You forgot to specify a starting volume.
I think the businessman should not have answered the technical question of how many kilos of Lithium you get from 1000 liters of saline. With the ratio in particles of 1:1000 you have to take into account the low weight of Lithium. Sandy rightly noted that. 1 liter of Lithium weighs just over 0.5 kg.
Never doubted Sandy's honesty. Despite the highly aggressive monetization & his obvious pain when parting with a Buck, I have never once thought he might sell his opinion, and his decision to put his money where his mouth is makes this more believable. However, given the history of lazer hydrogen discs, Quantumscape, Nikola & that Vietnamese car thing, I'll reserve judgement. Even Cathy Woods picks better than Sandy. Godspeed, EnergyX.
Jury's still out on Aptera.
Don't forget Sandy's tour of NXU. A complete scam company in my opinion, and stock down like 95% since his tour published in June 2023.
@@ckennylin717 Is there a huge market for 3 leg Daleks?
@@ggchillax NXU, I forgot! Hope this one goes right or they'll be calling him "Kiss of Death" Munro.
@@ggchillax Thanks for the head up! I see the stock went from $20.00 to $.020 in five years!
A very interesting insight into lithium extraction technologies.
I'm working in northern Quebec and its booming with lithium up here. you can find it most places you look on the ground even. The influx of money for exploration is great, the infrastructure has been built for x amount of people and there are 10 times as many people using them , so thats a bit frustrating at times but the money is slowly upgrading the services.
At the end of the video, I still hear in my head, “thanks boys and girls, and remember to keep tipping those cashiers” 😂😂
It would have been nice to hear more about the planned licensing. There are a small number of companies in the world in the lithium extraction business, so selling the full commercial plant to all of them would not amount to much profit or any growth potential. Maybe I missed it, but I have to assume that the licensing might be on a royalty type fee per units of lithium extracted. In addition, that fee needs to be carefully set so as to not motivate producers to find an alternative. Regardless of where battery technology goes in the materials used, lithium is highly likely to be at the center for a long time to come. The least expensive process to make it wins. I assume one of the pilots will be at Salton Sea.
This process looks great on the face of it!
"I also bought stock" That's pretty novel and I hope you got options to match!
As someone who's had a long career in the water space, I was immediately impressed with the use of electrodialysis. If they need help in that area I can point you towards experts in that technology. I also have no technical degree, but am very versed in electrochemical separation technologies.
I can't believe Sandy making nice to a business major.
I think I've seen that quite a bit the past week or two.
😂
Ah yes. The CEO Teague Egan was interviewed by the Fully Charged show founder Robert Llewellyn earlier this year and I was very impressed with his approach.
Thanks for the video and info. on the lithium extraction process. I've invested in you company & am super excited to see the growth in your/our company!!!
Did anyone else think the numbers seemed to change back and forth?
How often are you going to be working with a brine containing 1000ppm? At first he said hundreds of ppm - possibly 1200 or 1500 (which - again, how often?) - and then the ~90k acre location is expected to produce 400ppm. Then at the end he is doing math on a fictional 1000ppm.
Looking at the multiple settling tanks(ponds, whatever) - I just wondered how large these would need to be in a production system to feed those filter system at the rate he claimed?
I thought he said they were planning to license the process - then at the end he says they have bought ~90k acres.
Also - the idea that it is clean? Why do we think its clean?
We weren't told anything about the chemicals being used.
I never claimed to be brilliant (maybe I revealed as much above) - but the whole way through I just kept feeling like I was being sold all the good points. How about the down sides - there has to be some.
There seems to be a LOT of debt tied up in this and, as yet, no actual method to produce a profit.
Also - is this actually new?
Pretty sure this idea is being tested by a number of companies in different parts of the world... and so far none of it has gotten to a full production scale.
Teague is not an engineer. And you're correct, there are several companies working on the same process.
You misunderstood the discussion about enormous settling ponds ... those are what are used in the existing process for extracting lithium from brine not what is required for the energyX process. They were an example of why their process is much better.
This reminds me of E3 Lithium, they also invented direct lithium extraction.
They certainly did not invent it but they are more viable than this dog and pony show.
I've been wondering what is up with Energy X for awhile and this very open tour and interview clarifies a great deal. Maybe time to invest. Thanks Sandy. I like that you are broadening the scope in the overall EV tech industry.
Nice video, good info! I believe a similar technology is being used at the Salton Sea in CA...
It's the same people , G.M put 50 million into this .
All this sounds awesome , but like the extraction of oil and shale, no one ever asked the question, what purpose does such element serve within the earth? as in.. before we go taking it out the ground shouldn't we know how the earth utilizes this material, because I personally believe that crude oil in many ways acts as somewhat of a coolant within the crust of the earth preventing additional heat from reaching the surface. Heat that contribute to global warming. Needless to say that oil also contains co2 that's extracted when burned. so what purpose does lithium serve, because as it exists, and exists in abundance it must serve a purpose, and hopefully we don't end up only figuring that purpose out too late.
I disagree strongly with Sandy on his opening statement. Investing in commodity mining/extraction companies is a bad idea IMHO. They are highly competitive and become a race towards the bottom very quick. You can make good money if you invest in a private start up and sell your shares after an IPO when it's stock price rallies with new money from public investors buying into the hype. But you will not make money if you hold their stock long after the company goes public and it tanks after each quarterly report. Lithium is far too abundant to be the "new gold". It's like trying to ammass a fortune by investing in iron ore mining companies. Lithium prices are falling and as more companies enter the game and develop better mining techniques lithium supply will continue to increase and the prices will fall and companies will be raising more and more capital and pushing towards smaller profit margins to be one of these few companies to survive. Like other increasingly more abundant commodities, holding lithium itself will not be a good store of value like gold and other rare earth metals traditionally was.
One of the most intelligent comments on YT ever.
Was that also true in the Oil Rush.
But we are at the beginning mandatory phase out ice vehicles, and startup as I think want to patent common known enrichment methods to bribe miners.
The inverse, or correct practices of that is the reason why the examples of success are significant, Mergers and Aquisitions can go either way, bringing the best and inadequate for purpose practices together so that skilled Entrepreneurs can sort them out.
The proof of the pudding is not the legal protection plan of licenses and patents. It is better efficiency and effective products, as is repeated now for the world's leading corporations.
But yet they exist and are a mandatory part of the economy like farming.
THERE ARE LOTS Of miners in the Chile/Argentina region. If this company truly has technology and processes to extract brine minerals immediately and pump the water back into the well rather than wait 1.5yrs and let it evaporate into the air in the desert then they might have something here and be successful. Environmental regulations would really push for that water to be put back into the ground immediately.
Makes you wonder why no one has done this before, it's not a new technology..
The advantage of waiting 1,5 years is, that the energy for processing is delivered by the sun for free. Where is the advantage of this new (50 years old) process?
Never invest more than you can afford to lose and keep your regular life style.
Very interesting videos. Deep inside looks are my favourite and don't dumb it down, be real and show as many scientific professionals as possible. We want to learn something. 💕
At what point in the video is extracted lithium shown? Was hoping to see the final extracted lithium. Maybe I missed it.
And most systems were not running. Felt kind of strange.
I would definitely have asked many more hardball questions than Sandy if my money was at stake ! 🤔
@@raphofthehills4405- I wonder how loud it is… but if it was slow flowing liquid, it might have been working?
“extracted lithium shown?”
37:40 - the stack where the lithium chloride to lithium hydroxide is shown, in a few different sizes.
I did not see the lithium hydroxide on the tail end of the membrane processing.
This is like Elizabeth Holmes. You just gotta believe them and invest your money.
This is like Elizabeth Holmes. You just gotta believe them and invest your money.
Thanks for this great in depth look Sandy! I've already invested in this company in their investment round last year and this year. I'm super excited for what this company can accomplish, and it's great that you've recognized the same potential!
Great introduction to a cool aspect of the lithium world! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you Sandy❤.
Looks promising. Great video as usual from Munro.
Much appreciated!
What about the lake in the USA that the FED government has now concluded there to be enough Lithium to make 275,000,000 car batteries!? Just heard that info this week Sandy.
Another butt-kicking video from Sandy Munro!!
Sandy you made me feel as awkward as you looked. Your strength is your objectivity. I feel we are now in new territory.
@MunroLive a very well done video tour. I've been curious about this company and their process for awhile now, and you covered many of the questions I had about it. There are a few that were not covered, and if possible, would like to hear answers to them.
For example, with the resins & reagents used, is it all reusable materials or does any of it need to be treated as waste? What is the typical purity range of the final product? What is the overall energy budget for building 1000mg of purified lithium hydroxide?
Ahaha that’s a bro-ey CEO. Good to see the bros doing well
Interesting. Kinda looks like a Nikola, but with an Arcimoto twist. Could be good, but all the "proprietary" stuff is all just variations on long used processes. The new "hook" is the "green narrative" of putting the brine back in the well. Good luck to all. Maybe one of Sandy's investment ideas will finally come to fruition when they go public in a year or two (at least for a short time, hopefully longer than any stock sales embargo lasts). Sandy may have found a cool friend at ONE, but that's just another "dead company walking", like Arcimoto, who is certainly not having any FUN.
Teague has obviously been impressed by "Branding" (did you visit the restroom and find Energy X embossed toilet paper?). 😁
Go public or big buyout?
@@OOpSjm Buyout highly unlikely for several reasons, including the current investors and the thinking that you can make much more $$$ with an IPO, especially with the magic word Lithium!
I think the calculation of the yield is a little off
Fantastic interview!
I hauled frac water in North Dakota, and it's super concentrated brine. I wonder if that might contain lithium.
That's probably why big oil (from memory, BP?) are suggesting they want to supply lithium.
(Of course, they'll be extracting the oil with it)
@@rogerstarkey5390- that is a huge double win!!! ❤️
Later on, these same wells can be used to extract other minerals, using the same process, as they are needed! ❤️❤️
Each former oil well becomes a precious mineral mine for the future! ❤️❤️❤️
im very impressed with this to be honest
So what I gather is the point is processing brine in a closed system to avoid environmental pollution, and at 1kg/1000l brine, this is economically feasible.
Very exciting. I wonder what percentage of startups like this actually make it to the commercial level.
Ultimately, likely only a small minority, just like in every new industry.
This process sounds a lot like the idea presented at Tesla battery day. Also it’s ironic that Teague chose the name EnergyX. I’m impressed with the presentation and wish him a highly successful journey
IT's not a coincidence. Teague has been obsessed with Elon for a very long time.
Great job Sandy keep up the great interviews.
🙋♂️ THANKS SANDY,FOR BEING FORTHRIGHT WITH YOUR VIEWS AND OPINIONS…NOT A PROBLEM FOR THOSE WHO ARE HERE TO LEARN 🧐 WHAT IS COMING AND MUNRO TEAM FOR PRODUCING IT 🤗👍💚💚💚
I couldn't help but noticing that they put you in an art flash lab coat. PS kindness is still free the Highlander.😊
Welcome to the Investor group ! I jumped on board after seeing this company and Now you know with Jess and Zac, went there a while back and got in while it was .81 cents a share ! This will be something big in 5 years.
Looks like it’s at the lab bench scale. A long way to go.
I like the fact this was the real lab, not some PR-show-whatever. How do you know the difference? In the PR-show thing, there's lots of shiny, expensive looking equipment, it's clean. Here, bunch of plastic buckets, cheap furniture, tangles of hoses… 👍
Nice. There is a very long way from the lab to industrial scale.
I'm interested to know if it's profitable to use this on the brine waste from a desalination plant. That seems to be a highly concentrated source of salts distributed around the world.
Interesting question. I actually asked Teague this very question in a live event he had at that time, about a year ago, and he said no, there was no lithium in the byproduct of desalination.
@@TheWoodStroker Interesting. I wonder why. If the concentration in sea water is around 1%, it stands you reason it would be higher in the waste brine. But maybe the filters don't reject lithium, so the low concentration winds up in the fresh water side.
This should be a resounding success, just like Sandy's last investment pitch for Nobe.
I used to wonder why Sandy was always complaining about not having enough money, running the business on fumes etc. Now I know why.
Good for you will still be huge fan and followers
I just love the tech advancement idc about them stocks and whatever shenanigans
Excellent education, thank you.
It’s definitely interested. There seems to be things withheld. It almost seems to good to be true. I don’t know, I have my doubts on how cleaner or better this way is. I hope it’s true and successful.
why, this level 200 chemistry, I don’t understand why everyone is so blown away. A Nobel price for chemistry was given out in 1986 or there abouts for cyclic ether chromatography resins that could discriminate between different atomic radii of cation. Obviously the work done even earlier, in the 60s’. Check out “crown ethers” on Wikipedia, helpful skematics. The Oxygen atoms face the inside of the doughnut and have a partial negative charge, they hold on to the positively charged cation. The tightest ring only fits Lithium, the smallest of the cations. Slightly larger will fit Na (sorry, sodium); larger still potassium… and so on.
7:41 - "crude oil is nasty"
Pretty much an understatement. Crude can fume H2S gas and that kills you in a few seconds.
AWESOME !
Thanks that was insightful ❤🤩
Century lithium is advanced stage lithium DLE company providing a great opportunity to get into the LITHIUM space.
Happy to say I invested over a year ago. On the advice of Zack and Jesse from Now You Know channel.
Yep, that's where I first heard about them!
What about sodium batteries? When they come onto the market, would EnergyX look at refining the sodium from the brines?
Very jealous because I have wanted to buy stock in this company since I heard about their process.
You can but the stock on their website for a minimum of $1000 but it is not publicly traded yet so if they never do go public, it is a risk
Thank you!
You're welcome!
Tesla opened a Lithium mining and refining laboratory much earlier this year(or maybe it was last year). How does Tesla do mining and refining of Lithium? Do they have the same technology?
They ALL use graphite no matter what the battery is made of. As a consequence, the manganese dissolution does not only lead to capacity and power fading at the cathode, but also influences the SEI composition at the anode. In fact, an analysis of aged LiMn2O4/graphite cells via EIS revealed that the increased impedance at the graphite anode is largely contributing to the capacity fading of such lithium-ion cells.
If you are pumping back the brine which has had the lithium extracted, surely the new brine you are pumping out has now been diluted and has a lower lithium content?
Nice video!
Thanks!
I invested, but wonder: How the processes differ from the one used at the Salton Sea; 2. They use the word proprietary, but are there any patents?
It's been several years now and they don't seem to be any closer to fruition...
Oil and water are not “impermissible”. The word is “immiscible”. He’s no scientist.
I would assume the business case here is to sell the process to other businesses (license the IP) that actually do the mining. If the increase in yeld more then makes up for the license cost they will make plenty of money.
So would this kind of lithium extraction be something that can be done with waste brine from desalinization plants?
0.2 ppm in seawater, means you May extract 0.2 gr from 1000l water. I doubt thats is an economic source. Nevertheless If every plant is equipped IT could be 19000 tons per day. According to Google Numbers.
Good question, I would say yes so Saudi Arabia might want one of those plants. Also, other nations maybe SA might want to sell to some of their neighbors.
Batteries for their solar systems and they could run those plants.
Wow Sandy actually disclosed his investments!!!
1 Kg of lithium from 1 cubic meter of of brine? I doubt his numbers. He started the company when lithium was really sky high, look at it now, save your money.
Keep your friends close to you, but your enemies even closer.
I’ll watch with an open mind…🤔😊
Did he discuss the profitability of the process? It doesn't matter how efficient the process is if it cost more to run the process than the value of the results.
I'm asking because I had this on the background and don't want to re-watch the whole thing
Great chance to learn something. The fresh water used to tense the resin is recycled with 80-90% reusable in their system. At industrial scale, how many 1,000 of gals of “contaminated water” 10-20%- is expended in the process?
Does that 10-20% also get pumped into the underground brine layer? Is this a clean almost closed system that all is within the area of the brine underground layer?
How much fresh water is drawn from local ground water?
The greeat salt lake is unfortunately also super polyted with arsenic due to mining in the slc area
This guy's "California up-talkaccent" triggers my BS detector. That and many other aspects of him and his company.
The Greaser hair was what tips my BS meter 🎉
Poor old Sandy, he reminds me of my old dad , forgetting words and losing his track
Of thoughts, he is a star but I wish him well with his old
Age
You forgot to mention the secret ingredient... Which is wyao🎉 Work your a** off.🎉 And a little bit of... Feet, don't fail me now.❤
Not about first but more about learning and expanding knowledge 😎👍 like the desert in NV
LFP and sodium batteries both seem destined to be very common in transportation so anyway interesting to see what may happen after that however ascertained too!?🤯
LFP are lithium ion batteries.
IMHO this is not a high growth rate company because of the regulatory, capital, and construction headwinds to be encountered in profitably building and ramping lithium production facilities to competitive industrial scale outputs. I hope they succeed, and also hope they develop the agility and bandwidth to profitably and concurrently extract and process other minerals from brine.