An Oregon State University Cascades spinout has been named a semifinalist for a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored prize related to its desalination technology.
Again.
The company, Espiku, was founded by Bahman Abbasi, of the OSU College of Engineering, in October 2020.
This past April, it was named a semifinalist in the DOE’s Solar Desalination Prize, which is focused on ways to use solar-thermal power to turn salt water into clean water. That earned Espiku $250,000 and a $100,000 voucher for use with U.S. national laboratories, and put it in competition for further awards to build a prototype.
Now Espiku is also a semifinalist in the Energy Department’s Geothermal Lithium Extraction Prize.
Lithium is a key component in batteries used in electric vehicles and for grid-scale energy storage. But the U.S. faces a risk: It produces less than 2% of the world’s annual lithium supply. There’s a push to grow that number, especially by extracting lithium from brine instead of mining it from giant pits.
“We think our self-contained, modular and portable technology, which uses low-grade heat to pressurize brine for lithium salt production, will reduce production costs by about 50% below today’s market price,” Abbasi said in an OSU news release.
“Beyond cost reduction, we will turn U.S. brine deposits into valuable resources for green lithium production, enhancing national energy security as we move more and more toward the electrification of our transportation sector.”
Espiku gets $40,000 as one of 15 teams in the semifinals, from which fives teams will be chosen as finalists, with a total of $1.4 million to be doled out among them as they turn concepts into designs. Those advancing to the next phase will fabricate and test prototypes, with three winners sharing $2 million.
Three years ago, a team of researchers that Abbasi led landed a $2 million DOE award to advance their work on a portable desalination module that’s completely powered by the sun.
