A new startup called Princeton Critical Minerals (formerly PureLi) has innovated a new approach for how the world extracts lithium and other materials, including nitrate and potash. These materials power clean energy technologies and support modern agriculture. The company emerged from the University’s ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship, and it has developed a technology for boosting minerals production from evaporation ponds. These ponds generate about 40% of the world’s lithium and most of its naturally occurring nitrate.
This technology is a black disc with a special anti-fouling coating that floats on the ponds’ surface like a lily pad. And it effectively doubles the amount of incoming sunlight converted to thermal energy, accelerating the evaporation process and mineral production.
Z. Jason Ren, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, compared PCM’s technology to adding a second sun to conventional and open evaporation ponds.
During field pilot tests at evaporation ponds in northern Chile, the team (which partnered with chemical company Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile or SQM) found that their technology boosted evaporation rates when compared to open ponds by anywhere between 40 and 122%, depending on the composition of the brine in the pond.
Since this technology raises the production efficiency of existing ponds, the PCM team said it could alleviate the need to construct additional evaporation ponds, which could sprawl over many square miles to meet the world’s growing demand for lithium and other critical minerals. And any new similar project could be more compact, with a smaller spatial footprint and reduced environmental impact.
The company traces its origins to when CEO Sean Zheng joined Ren’s group as a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. During that time, Zheng aided investigations into technologies for accelerating evaporation in brine and other salty waters.
The team said the abundance of resources at Princeton available to researchers engaged in innovation and entrepreneurship, such as programs in the Office of Innovation and the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, was central to making this transition.
Zheng and Ren also participated in the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program and Princeton’s IP Accelerator Program – which helps researchers gain insights into market needs and refine their innovations for practical use. And Princeton University is the lead institution of the I-Corps Northeast Regional Hub.
Zheng also cited his participation in the inaugural cohort of the START Innovators program as an opportunity to transition from academic research into entrepreneurship. This program, part academic fellowship and part startup accelerator, allowed researchers to continue developing their technology while creating a business plan and building early-stage ventures.
The team also participated in the Design for Impact program hosted by the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, helping researchers translate scholarly research into real-world impact. And the program provides not only financial support but also allows researchers to work hand-in-hand with experts who can help prepare their ideas for commercialization.
After Princeton’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, the company was formally created in 2023. And PCM participated in the HAX program, a pre-seed startup development accelerator headquartered in Newark, New Jersey, and partnered with Chilean company SQM to pilot their technology.
After fundraising and pilot demonstrations in northern Chile, PCM is now in the early stages of commercialization. And while the projects with SQM have proven the technology’s technical and economic feasibility, Ren said they have also opened new research questions for his lab group at Princeton.
For example, the team observed that lily pad-enhanced ponds maintained better surface temperatures, with limited heat transfer to the bottom, compared to the more even heat distribution in open ponds. Since temperature impacts mineral solubility, Ren noted that the field demonstrations sparked new research questions into brine chemistry to optimize the evaporation process further.
Along with providing Ren with new directions for his scholarly research, the efforts with PCM have helped him expand his view of the impact of his work beyond traditional metrics like a high number of publications in top-tier journals.
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“When sunlight hits a traditional evaporation pond, the solar energy is dissipated across the entire pond — the process is less than 50% efficient,” said Ren, who is also a co-founder and chief scientist at PCM. “Our technology is over 96% efficient at converting that incoming sunlight into thermal energy to speed up evaporation in a real-world environment.”
“I-Corps and the IP Accelerator provided us with a new perspective on the questions we still needed to address about our work. When we talked to potential customers as part of the I-Corps program, for example, we found that many aspects of the technology that seemed interesting to us as researchers were less important to industry.”
“These are questions only emerged once we saw the results of the field tests. If we had kept our work in the lab, these new directions might never have come up.”
“My hope is that PCM’s story can inspire my colleagues at Princeton to think about how their research might also extend beyond the lab and into the real world. I want to share our journey so others might come to realize, ‘Hey, this is something I can also do.’”
Z. Jason Ren
“In many ways, the processes for mineral extraction are the same today as they were three decades ago. Our technology could really revolutionize the conventional approach to critical minerals extraction.”
“It really started as fundamental research — we published a scientific paper on the technology and evaporation processes involved. But we also felt that this technology was something that could make an impact. We wanted to find a way to bring it beyond the lab.”
“We’ve been moving very fast. In less than two years, we’ve moved from testing out small prototypes in kiddie swimming pools to building commercialization-ready products that we’ve deployed at actual mineral production facilities in South America.”
“Princeton provided the foundation, ecosystem, and resources that have taught us the skills and knowledge we need to succeed as a small business.”
Sean Zheng, PCM’s chief executive officer and a former Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment
“Helping to cultivate an ecosystem in which our faculty and researchers can effectively translate their technologies to the commercial sector is a core function of the Office of Innovation. Professor Ren has shown a very successful example of the ways in which one can leverage a combination of different programs and opportunities within the Princeton Innovation ecosystem to accelerate this translation.”
Craig Arnold, Vice Dean for Innovation and University Innovation Officer
“What we’re able to do with researchers like Professor Ren and his team is to help redirect how they think about their ideas. Our goal is to radically shift participants’ perspectives, so they leave our program with a completely different perspective than when they entered. We ask them complex questions that may fall outside a researcher’s traditional scope but are essential for translating academic innovations into successful outcomes.”
Nena Golubovic, the director of the Design for Impact program in sciences and engineering
