Energy Exploration Technologies, also known as EnergyX, is a renewable energy technology company focused on two things.

• More efficient access to sustainable lithium production using direct extraction technology.
• Technology enabling solid state battery electrolytes.

The company is changing the way humanity is powering our world and storing clean energy with breakthrough lithium-ion technology and energy storage solutions.

EnergyX was founded in late 2017, and incorporated in 2018 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Humanity is going through a critical tipping point right now with global temperatures at an all time high. Most of this is caused by human CO₂ emissions. Humans are emitting over 30 billion tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere every year. This is compared to 650 million of the natural earth’s cycle of volcanic mechanisms. If we don’t correct this trend immediately, a terrible outcome lies in our future. We need to transition the world’s energy supply to sustainable forms with vast energy storage systems to avoid CO₂ emissions and global warming.

We currently have between 10-15 team members and our group is quickly growing. Check out our Careers Opportunities Section if you are interested in working at EnergyX.

Our main laboratory is in the Silicon Valley Area right by San Francisco and Palo Alto, California. We also have ongoing research and development at the M-WET laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. Our corporate headquarters is in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and we have back offices in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Get in Touch!

EnergyX has both research partners and commercialization partners. We secured the exclusive worldwide rights to a portfolio of technology from a tri-institutional collaborative effort between Monash University, CSIRO (the Australian National Laboratory), and The University of Texas at Austin (UT). The work was also backed by a $10.75m U.S. Department of Energy grant.

Aside from the $10.75m DOE grant supporting the University of Texas research, EnergyX has raised in the millions of dollars, and is a privately funded company with substantial financial backing.

EnergyX is not a lithium producer. We develop and distribute technology to help lithium producers more efficiently and cost effectively produce their battery grade lithium. Read below for more on our proprietary technology.

We invented a novel form of membrane to separate lithium ions out of the complex salt mixture in salt brines. Think of it like a soup with carrots, potatoes, broccoli and peas. You put the whole soup through a size sieve, where only the water and the peas fit through. In simple terms, this is how we separate the lithium from the rest of the ion such as potassium, magnesium, calcium, sulfate, and others, which are larger than lithium and have a different charge.

We had to create our own novel membrane to complete this process, which is patent protected. No membrane to date could target and separate specific ions in high salinity solutions. Other technology such as Nanofiltration work in low salinities, however LiTAS™ is a combination of a new class of materials called Metal Organic Frameworks (MOF) combined with polymers for stability, allowing robust mechanical features.

The lithium enriched brine sources pass through the LiTAS™ membrane a series of times to separate, extract, and refine the lithium to the appropriate level. This takes a matter of hours to days depending on a few factors. In some scenarios LiTAS™ may be complementary to conventional pond methods, however in comparison those take an average of 18 months to yield final product.

We use a cost effective electrodialysis mode of operation that minimizes electricity usage versus new competing technologies. Versus conventional technology that uses solar driven evaporation ponds, LiTAS™ energy usage will be marginally higher but a significantly smaller facility footprint makes it a much more environmentally friendly solution overall.

The first option is to use local sources of energy, hopefully provided by sustainable means such as solar or wind energy.

The main sources of sustainable energy generation are solar, wind, and hydro power. Once the energy has been created from these sources, it is typically distributed through the grid and used immediately. Batteries come into play if we want to store this energy and use it at a later time.

Lithium, in its pure form, is the lightest metal in the world, hence why its energy density is so high. It is atomic #3 on the periodic table, and is the element that is used in the majority of the world’s rechargeable batteries.

Lithium is a natural resource that comes from the earth. Humans mine lithium from a few different sources. There are two main places are 1) From typical hard rock mining from a pit excavated in the ground, 2) From salt brines, which are very salty waters (>30%) which have high concentrations of lithium (think a salt lake). Most of the high lithium concentration salt brines are in South America in a place known as the lithium triangle.

Lithium is the main, non-replaceable, material in rechargeable batteries. Today the demand for batteries is growing exponentially in order to build electric vehicles, and to store renewable energy generated from solar and wind sources.

EnergyX is in the technology development and scaling stage right now. We must go through a series of in-field pilot plants before commercial facilities can be deployed. Our best estimate is that EnergyX LiTAS™ technology will be in the market within 3-4 years’ time. Solid-state battery technology could be implemented in the mid-2020's.