Koch invests in lithium extraction and PET recycler

Koch Industries is investing $252 million in Compass Minerals to help the company extract lithium from Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Compass plans to build one plant that chemically extracts lithium from the brine and another that converts the lithium into battery chemicals. The latter is expected to produce 11,000 metric tons (t) of lithium chemicals annually when it comes on line in 2025 and three times that amount at full scale. In June, Koch’s separations business acquired lithium extraction technology from Chemionex and combined it with its own separation methods. Compass, however, plans to use extraction technology from EnergySource Minerals. Koch says it has put nearly $1.9 billion into batteries, energy storage, and solar power over the past 2 years. Separately, a Koch subsidiary will invest $30 million in Ioniqa Technologies, a Dutch polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycler. Ioniqa says it uses ionic liquids to convert colored PET waste, which is difficult to recycle economically, into a monomer for producing new PET. Ioniqa’s demonstration plant can digest 10,000 t of PET annually, and Koch plans to help scale up the process.