Critical Minerals

& resource recovery

Lithium, rare earths, and strategic salts are already dissolved in the brines the world pumps, treats, and throws away. Trevi's renewable brine-concentration platform concentrates them into a recoverable mineral stream and returns up to 98% of the water clean.

The Minerals Are Already in the Water

Batteries, magnets, and grid storage are multiplying demand for lithium and rare earths while refining stays concentrated in a handful of countries. Every new hard-rock mine takes a decade to permit. Every new evaporation pond takes square miles of land and one to two years of sun before it yields product.

Meanwhile, geothermal plants, oilfields, desalination plants, and mines bring mineral-bearing brine to the surface every day, then pay to dispose of it. Trevi treats that brine as the orebody: concentrate it with low-grade heat, hold the minerals, give the water back.

Dissolved inventory · by source stream

Salar Brine: Lithium · Potassium
Geothermal Brine: Lithium · Zinc · Manganese
Oilfield Produced Water: Lithium · Rare Earths · Iodine · Strontium
Mine & Tailings Water: Rare Earths · Strategic Metals
Desal & Industrial Concentrate: Magnesium · Potassium · Boron

Recoverable value depends on chemistry. It is confirmed by assay, not assumption.

Areas of Recovery

Trevi's resource-recovery work runs as three concurrent programs. Each takes a brine the industry already produces and turns a disposal cost into mineral revenue.

Lithium

Lithium, Without the Evaporation Pond

Forward osmosis concentrates lithium-bearing brine with low-grade heat instead of sun and seasons. It runs continuously, ignores the weather, and sits on a footprint measured in acres rather than square miles. The concentrate feeds direct extraction or precipitation at grades worth processing, and the pond's biggest casualty, the water itself, comes back clean.

Feed: Salar · Geothermal · DLE Eluate
Driver: Low-Grade Heat · 65–85 °C
Output: High-Grade Li Concentrate + Fresh Water
Advantage: Continuous · No Sun, No Seasons

How the Loop Works

Rare Earths & Strategic Metals

Rare Earths From Water We Already Pump

Mine water and oilfield brines carry rare earth elements and strategic metals in dilute solution. Today that is a disposal cost. SaltVault™ pressurized forward osmosis concentrates these streams far past the point where reverse osmosis stalls, holding the metals in a recoverable concentrate while the site gets its water back. Trevi is already under contract for brine concentration and resource recovery with the mining industry.

Feed: Mine Water · Produced Brine
Process: Pressurized FO · Beyond RO Limits
Output: REE-Bearing Concentrate + Reusable Water
Status: Under Contract · Mining Industry

Discuss Your Stream

By-Product Salts

Every Discharge Line Is a Mine

Desalination and industrial plants pay to dispose of concentrate rich in magnesium, potassium, and boron. Concentrating that stream toward minimal liquid discharge shrinks the compliance problem and leaves a salable salt stream behind. The approach was validated in brine-concentration programs from Orange County to five NAWI mobile-pilot sites across California.

Feed: Desal & Industrial Concentrate
Recovery: Up to 98% of the Water
Output: Mg · K · B Salt Concentrate
Benefit: MLD / ZLD Compliance

See All Solutions

The Technology

SaltVault™ Concentration

Electrochemical softening in place of lime, then pressurized forward osmosis pulling water out of brine long after conventional membranes hit their pressure wall. No low-grade heat, no thermal draw regeneration. It is the step that makes dilute minerals economic.

See the SaltVault™ Platform

Start Here

Brine Assay Program

Chemistry decides the project. Send us your brine analysis and we'll model recoverable minerals, water return, and the economics of a pilot on your stream.

Request an Assay

From Brine to Concentrate

01 · Assay
Every project starts with brine chemistry. Mineral concentrations, competing ions, temperature, and volume decide the flowsheet, and whether there is a commercial project at all.
02 · Concentrate
Forward osmosis draws water across the membrane into Trevi's AquaDraw™ solution by osmotic pressure alone; draw regeneration is a separate step using low-grade heat, and fouling control remains feed-specific.
03 · Push Past the Wall
SaltVault™ takes over here: electrochemical softening removes the hardness that sets the scaling ceiling, then pressurized forward osmosis keeps concentrating where reverse osmosis stalls, driving the brine toward saturation at a fraction of RO's hydraulic pressure.
04 · Recover
The saturated concentrate is the handoff to project-specific extraction or crystallization. Special Project Delivery develops the adjacent critical-resource infrastructure that carries recovery forward to lithium salts, rare-earth concentrate, or by-product salts.
05 · Return the Water
Draw regeneration on waste heat releases the fresh water: up to 98% of the feed returned to the site, the watershed, or the next process.

Questions Operators Ask

Which minerals can be recovered?

Lithium and rare earth elements are the anchor minerals. Depending on brine chemistry, magnesium, potassium, boron, zinc, and other by-product salts can carry meaningful value in the same concentrate. The assay decides. Concentration alone doesn't make a project commercial; chemistry does.

What brine sources qualify?

Salar and geothermal brines, oil & gas produced water, mine and tailings water, and desalination or industrial concentrate. If the stream is salty and already being pumped, it is worth assaying.

How is this different from evaporation ponds?

Ponds trade time and land for concentration: square miles of liners and 12 to 24 months of sun, with the water lost to the sky. Heat-driven FO concentrates continuously on an industrial footprint and returns the water instead of evaporating it.

Is this direct lithium extraction (DLE)?

It's the step that makes DLE economic. Most DLE chemistries and precipitation routes want a concentrated, cleaner feed. Trevi's FO/PFO loop does the heavy concentration work up front, and can also concentrate dilute DLE eluate downstream.

What happens to the water?

It comes back. Up to 98% of the feed is recovered as clean water, nano-filtered and meeting WHO and NSF standards, for reuse on site or return to the watershed. The mineral pays for the plant; the water is the second product.

How does a project start?

Send us your brine analysis. We model recoverable minerals, water return, and pilot economics against your stream, then deploy a containerized pilot on site before committing to scale.

Already Running on Real Brine

35°30'N 120°40'W

California · NAWI Mobile Pilot

Mobile FO/PFO treatment train run across five California sites under the National Alliance for Water Innovation, concentrating RO brine, agricultural drainage, and produced water toward near-zero liquid discharge.

25 m³/day · Five Sites · Published

33°45'N 117°52'W

Orange County, California

$1.7M California Energy Commission brine-concentration program, recovering water and concentrating salts from municipal desalination concentrate.

CEC Program · Brine Concentration

21°00'N 57°00'E

Oman · Petroleum Development Oman

Solar-driven, high-recovery thermal FO concentrating hypersaline oil & gas produced water toward minimal liquid discharge.

140 m³/day · Produced Water

Patents granted · 11 more pending · draw chemistry & recovery

98%

Water recovery demonstrated · inland brackish systems

80%

Lower energy than conventional desalination

Deployments across 6 countries · seawater to hypersaline brine

Work with Trevi

Every project starts with a brine assay. Trevi models the recoverable minerals, the water returned, and the economics of a pilot on your stream.

Request a Brine Assay The Technology