Fusion fuel supply challenges
If fusion power becomes commercially viable, the industry will require significantly larger quantities of lithium. Most planned fusion power plants intend to operate on a fuel mix of deuterium and tritium. While deuterium is readily available, tritium is exceptionally rare in nature, leading many in the fusion sector to propose breeding tritium on-site within reactors.
In this proposed process, fusion reactors would be surrounded by a blanket of lithium. When fast-moving neutrons from the reaction strike lithium atoms, the atoms split into helium and tritium, which can then be collected, purified, and fed back into the reactor as fuel.
However, not all lithium performs this function equally. Lithium-6 is far more effective at capturing neutrons and generating tritium, but it accounts for only about 7.5% of natural lithium, with the heavier lithium-7 making up the remainder. Because separating the two isotopes is difficult, current global processing capacity is limited.
Electrolyzer technology and market strategy
To address this bottleneck, startup Licube has licensed technology from Hirosaki University in Japan to purify lithium-6 from naturally occurring lithium. The core system relies on an electrolyzer, where lithium is dissolved in a liquid on one side of a ceramic membrane. As electrical current flows across the membrane, lithium-6 moves faster, allowing Licube to extract and separate the isotope with a target enrichment level of at least 99.995%.
Yohei Kiguchi, co-founder and CEO of Licube, stated that the market could reach $50 billion by 2040 if fusion energy comes online. Kiguchi was inspired to launch the company after visiting the ITER experimental fusion reactor in France.
Because commercial fusion plants remain years away from completion, Licube plans to utilize its technology in the interim to supply purified lithium to the semiconductor, pharmaceutical, fission reactor, and spacecraft industries. The startup is among 20 companies presenting at the Startup Battlefield pitch competition during TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.