Chile Bets Millions to Unearth Lithium, Rare Earths With $5.8M Funding

In a strategic push to secure its future in critical minerals, Chile’s government is funneling millions into cutting-edge research. The state development agency, Corfo, has announced grants totaling up to $5.8 million for two pioneering projects aimed at revolutionizing how the country extracts lithium and recovers valuable metals from old mining waste.

The first initiative, backed by up to $1.9 million, has a clear and urgent focus: finding the best way to pull lithium directly from brine. Over the next two years, researchers will rigorously test various Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technologies to see which are most effective for Chile’s unique salt flats and saline lagoons. The goal is to build a dedicated testing platform and gather crucial local data, moving DLE from theory to practice under Chilean conditions.

The larger award, worth up to $3.9 million, targets a different kind of treasure—the rare earth elements and other critical metals locked away in decades of mining leftovers. This three-year project will develop and pilot sustainable processes, like bioleaching, to recover these materials from tailings, waste dumps, and slag.

Corfo estimates Chile’s mining liabilities contain a significant hidden stockpile, including at least 46,000 tonnes of vanadium and 16,000 tonnes of cobalt, turning an environmental challenge into a potential economic opportunity.

“This is about applying a circular economy mindset to our mining industry,” a Corfo representative noted. “We’re transforming liabilities into assets through innovation and reprocessing.”

Corfo’s R&D Challenges Program

The funding comes from Corfo’s R&D Challenges program, financed by royalties from mining leases in the prolific Salar de Atacama. It arrives amid breakneck momentum in Chile’s lithium sector. Late last year, mining giants Codelco and SQM finalized a landmark partnership to form ‘Nova Andino Litio,’ a joint venture that will control operations in the Atacama salt flat for decades.

Meanwhile, industry leader Albemarle recently completed a successful test of its own DLE technology in Chile. The company reported recovering over 94% of lithium in a pilot that ran for more than 3,000 hours, while reusing up to 85% of the water, a key efficiency gain. Albemarle has invested heavily, putting $30 million into the pilot plant and an additional $216 million into a salt processing facility in the region.

While experts tout DLE’s potential for being more efficient and environmentally gentle than traditional evaporation ponds, a major hurdle remains: the technology is still unproven at a full commercial scale in Chile’s demanding environment. These new state-backed projects aim to provide the essential homegrown evidence to change that, positioning Chile not just as a mineral supplier, but as a leader in next-generation mining technology.