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Interfacial solar evaporation for sustainable brine mining

Nature Water volume 3, pages 135–137 (2025)Cite this article

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Solar evaporation ponds are widely used in brine mining but face environmental and societal challenges. Advancing interfacial solar evaporation technology from lab discovery to field demonstration shows promise in improving pond efficiency and sustainability.

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Fig. 1: Field demonstration of PureLi’s Lilypad technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Sunxiang Zheng, Aashish Khandelwal & Zhiyong Jason Ren

  2. PureLi Inc., Newark, NJ, USA

    Sunxiang Zheng, Aashish Khandelwal & Zhiyong Jason Ren

  3. Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile (SQM), Las Condes, Santiago, Chile

    Beatriz Oelckers

Authors
  1. Sunxiang Zheng
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  2. Beatriz Oelckers
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  3. Aashish Khandelwal
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  4. Zhiyong Jason Ren
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Contributions

Z.J.R. conceived the initial idea with input from all co-authors. S.Z., A.K. and Z.J.R. conducted data analysis and prepared the draft, and B.O. edited and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhiyong Jason Ren.

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Competing interests

The authors declare the following competing interests: S.Z. and Z.J.R. are co-founders of PureLi Inc. (now Princeton Critical Minerals, PCM), and A.K. is a shareholder. The technologies mentioned are protected by a portfolio of intellectual property owned by Princeton University and exclusively licensed by PureLi (PCM).

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Zheng, S., Oelckers, B., Khandelwal, A. et al. Interfacial solar evaporation for sustainable brine mining. Nat Water 3, 135–137 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-025-00394-y

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