According to the latest industry report from Fastmarkets, since late 2025, battery energy storage systems (BESS) and artificial intelligence (AI) computing infrastructure have jointly emerged as the two core engines driving global lithium demand, completely reshaping the supply-demand landscape for lithium resources. Fueled by the rapid expansion of the energy-storage market and the surge in behind-the-meter energy-storage demand supporting hyperscale data centers worldwide, battery-grade lithium carbonate prices surged sharply in 2026, with an annual gain exceeding 212%. Volatile lithium prices have exposed energy-storage developers and battery manufacturers to substantial cost risks, leaving upstream and downstream enterprises grappling with dual challenges: supply-chain stability and raw-material cost control. Faced with the widening lithium resource gap, expanding lithium production capacity through integrated DLE processes as well as tailings and mother-liquor resource-recovery technologies has become a core strategy for global brine operators to hedge against lithium-price volatility and secure stable supply. BICHEM, a global DLE technology provider, is delivering a solution for the industry with its full-set patented process packages.
The energy storage sector is currently witnessing diversified development. Lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) remains the dominant technical route for energy-storage cells, accounting for over 90 % of the global energy-storage battery market share. Meanwhile, skyrocketing lithium prices have accelerated the commercial roll-out of sodium-ion energy storage. Companies including CATL and Alfen have rolled out mass-scale sodium-based energy-storage product deployments in an attempt to reduce reliance on lithium resources. Nevertheless, industry insiders generally hold the view that lithium-ion batteries will remain the mainstay for energy storage in the medium-to-long term. In addition, energy storage supporting AI data centers has emerged as a brand-new growth driver. Consulting agencies forecast that half of all newly-built data centers worldwide will rely on energy storage for load balancing by 2030, and energy-storage deployment for data centers will register an average annual growth rate of 25 % over the next five years, continuously boosting rigid demand for lithium raw materials. Against continuous demand-side expansion, supply-side bottlenecks have come to the fore, including imbalanced global distribution of lithium processing capacity, lengthy development cycles for overseas lithium mines, and low resource-utilization efficiency of conventional brine-based lithium extraction. These factors have directly intensified drastic swings in lithium prices. Major energy-storage enterprises are compelled to hedge against rising raw-material costs via measures such as long-term supply contracts and futures hedging.
Salt lakes around the world constitute the core carrier for stable lithium supply. However, conventional solar evaporation processes feature notable drawbacks: a lengthy production cycle of 12 to 24 months and an overall lithium recovery rate of merely 40%-60%. Substantial volumes of lithium remain untapped within lithium-precipitation mother liquor and mine tailings, and capacity expansion cannot keep pace with lithium consumption growth driven by energy storage and AI computing power. This is especially true for the Latin American Lithium Triangle. Local environmental regulations keep tightening, and mandatory requirements such as the GISTM tailings management standard and zero-liquid-discharge rules have substantially raised operating costs for extensive mining practices. For local mine operators, unlocking low-grade lithium resources contained in waste brine and tailings stockpiles and improving per-unit lithium output from salt lakes have become top priorities. Commercially available general-purpose extraction and adsorption processes are only compatible with pristine raw brine. When subjected to high-salinity, high-impurity working conditions of tailing leachate and recycled mother liquor, they are prone to emulsification and continuous recovery-rate deterioration, making them incapable of supporting stable ten-thousand-ton-scale production.
As a global solution provider specializing in Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) from salt lakes, BICHEM has developed integrated high-efficiency lithium-extraction solutions built on three patented systems: extractant application, adsorbent condition adaptation, and end-to-end system integration, precisely addressing current demands for supply security and cost reduction across the lithium supply chain. Unlike service providers that only supply standalone chemicals or equipment, BICHEM delivers a full-loop closed-loop process covering raw brine enrichment, pre-treatment adsorption for impurity removal, multi-stage counter-current extraction, lithium-precipitation mother-liquor recovery, and tailings resource utilization. Custom operating parameters are tailored for Latin-American salt lakes featuring high magnesium and sodium contents as well as legacy boron tailings. The overall lithium recovery rate can be steadily raised above 95 %, while wastewater discharge is cut by over 90 %, concurrently complying with stringent local environmental regulations.
BICHEM boasts proven standardized scale-up capabilities ranging from lab-scale tests to ten-thousand-ton-grade production lines. Multiple ten-thousand-ton-scale industrial DLE projects have been deployed across South America. By embedding synergistic tailings and mother-liquor recovery processes into complete lithium-extraction production lines, existing lithium resources can be tapped without additional mining infrastructure, effectively expanding available lithium carbonate capacity, easing raw-material lithium shortages from the supply side and smoothing out price volatility. For existing operational salt-lake projects, its lightweight technical retrofitting service requires no replacement of core hardware. Improvements of 10%-20% in lithium recovery efficiency can be achieved merely by optimizing material circulation and process parameters, delivering a short payback period on investment and aligning with the cost-reduction goals of global energy-storage enterprises.
Numerous countries worldwide are accelerating the localization of lithium supply chains. Battery enterprises from the United States, Japan and South Korea have reconfigured production lines to manufacture energy-storage cells, creating an urgent need across upstream and downstream sectors for stable, low-cost domestic lithium raw-material supplies. Against an industry backdrop where lithium demand keeps rising driven by energy storage and AI computing power and resource price fluctuations become the norm, efficient, integrated and scalable DLE processes serve as a critical lever for securing industrial-chain safety. Backed by localized global technical services, full-scenario patented technologies and extensive overseas industrial-project validation, BICHEM helps global salt-lake operators maximize the potential of lithium resources and consolidates the upstream raw-material foundation for the long-term stable development of the energy-storage industry.
