By STEVE BRAWNER
How might Arkansas really profit from its abundant lithium reserves – rather than just help big companies profit? A luncheon Monday offered a clue.
Menen Group, a Springdale-based water company, wants to use its evaporation and freezing technique to use 60% less energy in the lithium extraction process. Lithios from Boston wants to electrochemically separate lithium from saltwater brine like a magnet attracting metal. San-Diego-based Tyfast says it can make batteries competitive with diesel engines in big trucks and military vehicles.
All three would be working with the big companies – ExxonMobil, Chevron, Standard Lithium and others – that are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into extracting lithium from the Smackover Formation.
As I shared in a recent column, lithium may be the state’s biggest business story since Walmart grew into the world’s largest retailer. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the state’s southern part harbors between 5 and 19 million tons. That’s enough to meet projected worldwide car battery demand in 2030 nine times over.
Other nearby states, including Texas, have lithium, too. But Arkansas has an established, friendly regulatory apparatus and is aggressively courting the industry. It’s clearly the leader.
The luncheon I mentioned earlier was organized by The Venture Center, which is an entrepreneurial support organization.
It has created the Arkansas Lithium Technology Accelerator, where it and those big companies invite three startup efforts at a time to participate. Over two-and-a-half weeks, the startups meet with the big companies, with state and local economic developers, with investors, and with academic institutions.
Menen Group, Lithios and Tyfast are the second group, or cohort. The Venture Center has planned at least two more for 2026.
Daniel Whalen, Menen Group’s technical director, said in an interview that the company creates a vacuum to lower the temperature required to evaporate the saltwater, and then it freezes the water. The evaporation-freezing process concentrates the lithium in the remaining liquid and ice at a lower energy cost.
He said the accelerator is helping the company understand producers’ needs while connecting it to financial and economic organizations.
“We’ve learned exactly where the state of the industry is in terms of lithium,” he said. “We’ve understood where the forecast is in lithium for Arkansas, and we’ve also started to understand where not only our technology applies, but also all of our expertise in water-wastewater, and where we can apply that in other parts of the flow sheet.”
Not just any company receives an invitation to participate. The Accelerator is looking for companies that have moved past the concept phase and are ready to invest in pilot projects.
Lithios, in fact, already has a pilot project in south Arkansas. The company, which has its roots at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes it can lower the cost of lithium production by as much as 40%. It has raised $15 million in seed funding.
Director of Operations Anna Scheidt said the company’s technology uses stacks of electrode plates set at a voltage that attracts only lithium ions. Again, it’s sort of like a magnet. The brine flows in, the plates capture the lithium ions, the brine flows out, the company runs a rinse solution, and then it reverses the current. The process then releases the lithium ions into a highly purified concentrate solution.
Then there’s Tyfast, which says it can make electric batteries viable for heavy-duty trucks and military operations. It uses lithium and Hot Springs-mined vanadium rather than graphite to produce the anode (negative) part of the battery. He says batteries then charge faster and work better in cold weather. The U.S. Army could be a customer because it wants hybridized vehicles that run longer and silently.
The Venture Center’s Executive Director, Arthur Orduna, said companies like Tyfast are needed for the midstream part of the process. Arkansas would fail to capitalize on this opportunity if all it does is let these big companies come into the state and extract the resource. It needs to develop an entrepreneurial ecosystem with companies that make something out of the lithium, like Tyfast would do.
“Let’s build off of what we have as a unique, unique global asset here,” he said.
Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 20 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com.