Dr John Burba: We 've got the perfect storm on lithium

The lithium market is heating up, and in the past few years many new faces have joined the industry. However, experienced people still exist, and some people invest their expertise in new careers.

Dr Yuehanbuerba is such a veteran. Now chief executive of battery metals international(CSE: IBAT), an advanced technology company focused on lithium saline extraction, he has a rich industry background and rich knowledge.

Lithium-ion batteries, he believes, are in a perfect storm. "The demand side is exploding, the power supply for electric vehicles, grid systems and the power supply for cloud systems, data systems," he added. "The supply side is limited because we have only a few large companies. .. .. And there are really only three resources that are being used. "

In cooperation with Battery Metals International, Burba is working on the development of intellectual property rights related to lithium extraction in connection with the petroleum halide extraction project. The company calls the process environmentally friendly, low-cost and easy to deploy.

The following is an interview conversation.

INN: You have a very long background in the lithium industry. What do you think of the market today? Investors are still interested in lithium, or are they now more inclined to use other battery metals?

Dr John: Lithium is still really hot. In my experience -- I 've been involved in other activities, I 've made some restrictions on rare earths -- you have to focus on the demand side, not the supply side. And in lithium, we got a perfect storm, because the demand side is exploding, the power supply for electric cars, the power supply for grid systems, and the backup power for cloud systems, data systems; All three are huge demands for lithium-ion batteries. So the demand side is very high, and the supply side is limited, because we have only a few big companies, and they're not huge companies -- they're very big on lithium -- and actually only three resources are being used.

So the industry is under a lot of pressure today. These guys are doing everything they can to provide more, but it's very time-consuming and very expensive. This is precisely what has led to the very high prices that continue to rise. What we are doing, our solutions will enable us to access new resources very quickly, which I think will be very beneficial to the industry.

INN: Interestingly, in the first quarter, we did see some concerns about the balance of lithium supply and demand, and some people said, "No, oversupply." How do you feel about that?

Dr John: As the company brings in big projects under development, we may be experiencing temporary oversupply in the short term. If they come quickly, you can relieve the stress. But I don't think I saw it. I was looking at the price of lithium yesterday, and lithium carbonate was actually higher than lithium at the end of the year. So a lot of people are guessing, they don't know. But the lithium-power industry, like existing suppliers, is actually quite fragile because they can not do so because their processes are huge, their construction costs are very expensive, and they will take a long time to complete.

Supply-let's talk a little more. Many market participants say it is difficult to add projects on time to meet growing demand. Can you talk more about your extraction techniques? You mentioned a few key points that investors might want to know.

Dr John: First of all, our technology is based on technology that has been commercialized for a long time. As I mentioned earlier, the original version is based on the invention of a friend of mine, Bierbaoman, who unfortunately is no longer with us. Bill and I invented the product in 1994. We sold this intellectual property to the FMC. I went to work at the FMC, designed the FMC factory, and the first level designers and engineers took over and did the real design work, and then they built a factory in Argentina.

The technology has worked very well since 1998, so we don't start with speculative things. We start with what we know, the core of its work. As I said, what we're doing now is we 've improved the absorbent to make it perform better, and then we 've completely changed the way it's used in engineering equipment. What we can do is we can build units that can be quickly transferred to the oil industry sites, and we can put them together -- they can be separated or separated for a long distance. So we might have a unit here, maybe another unit from here 5 miles, another unit from there 15 miles.

These units then send the products to the central factory for sorting and distribution. Because these things are portable, we can pick them up and move them. That's why I say that we can put these things in place very quickly and make good use of the resources very quickly. We are also entering resources that have been drilled, and there are wells from which salt water can be extracted, as well as treatment wells.

Another aspect of our very proud technology is our incredibly small environmental footprint. If you look at -- you can land on Google Earth, you can look at the Atacama desert in Chile, you can see thousands of acres of evaporation pools, and then huge amounts of salt pile up in the desert. Then, if you look at Greenbushes, this is the world's largest lithium-pyroxene mine, which is in Western Australia; You go look at that thing, it's a huge rock pile of open-pit mines. We didn't do this because we took the saline from the ground, we ran it once in the process, and then returned directly to the ground. We don't add anything. All we did was pull the lithium out. So we have-we don't have a lot of environmental problems inherent in these other processes.

INN: So we have rapid deployment, low environmental impact and cost?

Dr John: We expect that we will be at the lower end of the cost structure. I can't-obviously, I can't make any forward-looking statements about this, and we need to do something on the ground and run it, see what we actually do under these conditions. But engineering tells us that we will be much lower than lithium pyroxene. I think we're going to be at the bottom, and that's what we really want.

INN: At present, our lithium electricity is very expensive. We have a lot of companies in this field. Large companies like Tesla are interested in this. Is it time for investors to enter?

Oh, yes. It's almost like the Wild West. I think the big question in this field is, "Is there anything that can replace lithium and these batteries in the future? "I have been engaged in chemical and technological development for decades, trained as a physical chemist, and lithium has fundamental features that other elements in the periodic table do not have. This said that in theory, lithium batteries will provide the best performance for these batteries. All of this is performance-driven because you need less weight and more capacity. I think we 'll probably see a big alternative to lithium soon. Now, you 'll never say never, but it's not -- I don't think it's possible. I think we're going to last a long time.

That is to say, I think society as a whole, the global community, has decided that we are pushing electricity. I really believe in these tipping points, I believe in the drivers of society. I think we 've reached the critical point. Enough people, enough decision makers -- it's like you and me and what we buy -- have decided in the world that we're going electric. If that happens, there will be no regression unless there is a disaster. I think it's a big motivator, so when you see the penetration rate of electric cars today, it's insignificant. You know, China has achieved the most, and its share of all cars is still very low. It's moving, and I think the demand will be amazing. I think a metaphor is 1920 and the oil and gas industry. I think we may be able to continue pricing, quality pricing and high demand for a long time. That's my personal opinion.

INN: You 've talked about your company, what you're doing in a broad picture -- what can you tell investors what's going to happen next?

Dr John: We are rapidly establishing our demonstration unit. We have a few engineering steps we 'll go through, and ... .. .. We are about to launch many key achievements. We have developed that plan, and we are working on it. As we achieve these goals, we will issue a corresponding announcement, but we expect to move quickly towards having a unit in the field and demonstrate that we can successfully extract lithium with high recovery rates. Those are coming out. I can't say exactly when, but that's the path. In any project you want to do well, you have to break it down into several pieces. So we have some laboratory work that we will do, which is to verify the brine, different resources. We 'll make a prototype on a small scale, then we 'll make a large unit, and then we 'll run it and move on.

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