Qinghai Salt Lake in China also has the rainfall problem, so they can only use semi-DLE. The first and largest producer Lanke Lithium (Qinghai Salt Lake Industry Co. Ltd.) was bankrupted in 2020 due to heavy rains which caused massive floods in 2018. Now this is the interesting part for those salt lake lithium production in China. The projects at this lake produces more than 150kt of LCE in my opinion. The slave type labour is used in the area btw. Also the government company owns majority of the projects and gov subsidises everything. (see my post
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Qinghai Salt Lake in China is very similar to Uyuni salt lake in Bolivia. They both have very high magnesium problem and they both have rainfall problem.
You will see all info here on this document below;
" From Catamarca to Qinghai: The Commercial Scale Direct Lithium Extraction Operations"April 2020.
Yes, China was producing lithium from Qinghai salt lake for a long time. They use semi-DLE technology due to the rainfall. Semi-DLE is about keeping the brine in small pond for making some concentration then sending it to the DLE facility. This is very similar to ex-Livent (US) (then Arcadium, now RIO's) Fenix project in Argentina. They use the similar methods but DLE technology was different.
These Qinghai brines contain high concentrations of Mg and SO4 so the process was not being cheap, it was quite expensive actually. But yes, thanks to CCP, compensates everything. As I told on one of my previous posts the gov. company extracts all lithium in the Qinghai lake area.
Also, keep this in mind: "
The experiences of DLE technology and project development from Catamarca to Qinghai demonstrate that DLE technologies cannot be “copy and pasted” between resources, which is also true for the evaporation pond process of the Atacama applied to lower grade, less pure brines. DLE technology selection should always be project-driven. There is no such thing as a “best” technology".
Now let's read this (from the link above);
Commissioning: 2017
Capacity: Approximately 15,000 tonnes of Li2CO3 per year as of 2020
Qinghai Salt Lake is the largest and most well-known lithium project in Qinghai.
QSLI began their technology development program by trying to adapt an American company’s technology, but they were never able to achieve high lithium recovery and produce high purity products.
QSLI ended up collaborating on DLE with a Russian company, and in 2017 they started producing lithium chemicals.
In 2018, they intended to produce upwards of 50,000 tonnes/year by 2020 as part of a consortium
with battery manufacturer BYD.
In 2018, many in the lithium industry thought that QSLI would flood the market with cheap lithium chemicals, but like many failed projects in development of all resource types, the output never materialized.Despite not reaching Atacama-scale production, the Lanke project and other DLE projects in Qinghai were thought to partially “drive spot prices” in 2019.
Though their production was reportedly resilient in the face of
heavy rains which caused massive floods in 2018 (as one would expect for DLE),
QSLI had to file for bankruptcy in January, 2020. Their bankruptcy was caused by a troubled magnesium metal project despite their lithium product being profitable.
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