In October 2024, AZoMining presented the EU project Sea4Value in a background feature. The project aims to recover ten metals and minerals, including lithium, magnesium, scandium and gallium, from the brine of seawater desalination plants. Funded under Horizon 2020, it brings together 16 partners from eight countries. After 30 months of laboratory validation, a mobile laboratory was to run for 18 months at two plants: Denia on the Mediterranean and Fonsalia in the Canary Islands on the Atlantic.
The feature showed that Europe was looking at desalination brine as a domestic source of critical raw materials and as a way to give desalination plants an extra income stream.
Source: AZoMining