NeoLithica Announces Redwater DLE Pilot Test Results

We're pleased to share the results of bench-scale Direct Lithium Extraction testing conducted by CANDLE Lithium Corporation on Leduc Formation brine from our Redwater Lithium Project.

CANDLE, an Edmonton-based DLE technology developer, tested its proprietary sorbent across both semi-batch and continuous operating modes. At an optimized brine pH of 8, semi-batch testing achieved cumulative lithium extraction of 100% after three passes through the sorbent column. In continuous mode — the configuration more representative of how a commercial plant would actually run — the process extracted 95.6% of the lithium from a 40-litre brine sample, concentrating it from 22 mg/L to 1,261 mg/L, a 57-fold increase. Lithium selectivity over competing ions was strong and improved with scale, and critically, the sorbent showed no degradation in performance despite the hydrogen sulphide and organics naturally present in Redwater's oilfield brine — a real-world condition that isn't present in the synthetic brines many DLE technologies are first tested against.

This matters for a simple reason: Redwater and Peace River are chemically distinct brine sources, and having independent technology providers demonstrate high-recovery extraction on NeoLithica’s brine — not a generic analog — is exactly the kind of third-party technical validation that de-risks NeoLithica's broader DLE strategy. It also reinforces why Redwater, sitting on an already-producing oil pool with existing brine-handling infrastructure, remains one of our fastest potential paths to a working DLE pre-commercial demonstration.

This round of testing is a precursor phase. NeoLithica plans to extended testing at higher flow rates at pre-commercial pilot scale, which will allow it to begin refining the capital and operating cost estimates this initial bench-scale work wasn't designed to produce. We'll share those results as they become available.