The proprietary technology and process of Volt Lithium are designed to adapt to multiple brine chemistries.
This project has received a total of $2.5 million in funding from the North Dakota Industrial Commission’s Clean Sustainable Energy Authority and Renewable Energy Programme. The DLE unit is designed to extract lithium from produced water, a byproduct of oil and gas production, supporting Volt Lithium’s strategy to work with existing U.S. oilfield infrastructure.
Wellspring president and CEO Mark Watson stated: “Wellspring and the State of North Dakota are excited to commence field operations with Volt in North Dakota in the second half of June.” He added: “Volt is the only DLE company that the State Of North Dakota has funded to date. Based upon the successful lithium extraction results at Volt’s R&D facility in Calgary, both groups have full confidence Volt’s proprietary lithium extraction unit will be successful in the field.”
Volt Lithium’s technology is engineered to adapt to different brine chemistries, enabling expansion into regions like the Bakken and Permian Basin—two major oil-producing areas in North America. The Bakken has nearly three times the lithium concentration of the Permian, with an estimated potential of up to 50,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), while the Permian could yield up to 170,000 tpa.
Volt deployed its first DLE unit in the Permian Basin in September 2024. By February 2025, that system was upgraded to a Generation 5 unit, marking the largest operational DLE system in North America.
Now in its final assembly stage, Volt’s mobile field unit will begin processing brine from the Bakken formation, which ranks as the second-largest source of brine in the continental United States. The company is also working on converting extracted lithium chloride into high-purity lithium carbonate to meet demand from potential buyers.
Volt’s proprietary extraction compound and operating system are designed for efficiency, with potential cost advantages through collaboration with existing salt-water disposal operators.
Volt Lithium president and CEO Alex Wylie said: “Volt’s modular, rapidly deployable DLE technology is gaining strong interest from industry partners. Volt’s deployment of a second unit into the Bakken demonstrates the technology is capable of adapting to multiple types of oilfields and varying grades of lithium concentrations, positioning the company to meet growing market demand and expand across key American basins.”
The Bakken deployment aims to demonstrate the flexibility of Volt’s DLE process and the potential for improved project economics in various oilfield environments.
