06:35 AM EDT, 04/24/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Standard Lithium ( SLI ) , a near-commercial lithium development company, was at last look up 1.8% in US premarket as it announced Wednesday that it has successfully commissioned and validated the performance of what it terms the largest continuously-operating direct lithium extraction equipment in North America.

The company recently installed a commercial-scale DLE column at its Demonstration Plant near El Dorado, Arkansas. The column is a Li-ProTM Lithium Selective Sorption unit. The column was installed and integrated into the company's existing Demonstration Plant, and is currently extracting lithium from Smackover Formation brine at an input flow rate of 90 gallons per minute, the company said in a statement.

"This is, to the best of the company's knowledge, both the largest DLE installation, and the only example of a commercial-scale DLE column in operation in North America," the company statement said. "Since commissioning, the column has operated continuously and exceeded the design parameters for lithium recovery and rejection of impurities."