From Ore and Brine
to European Resilience
LiCuPlus demonstrates low-carbon, zero-waste technologies across the copper and lithium value chains — advancing the EU–Chile Strategic Partnership to secure the critical raw materials behind Europe’s green and digital transitions.
Securing copper and lithium
through strategic partnership
LiCuPlus is a Horizon Europe Innovation Action that raises recovery from complex, low-grade copper ores and lithium brines while cutting emissions, waste and water use. It brings European and Chilean industry and research together across the full value chain, from deposit to battery-grade product.
Complex Copper Ores
Turning declining, arsenic-rich concentrates into clean cathodes — with geometallurgy, selective flotation and impurity management linking deposit to product.
Low-Quality Brines
Direct Lithium Extraction for Chilean brines with low lithium and high Mg/Ca ratios, refined to battery-grade Li2CO3, LiOH and lithium metal.
Zero Waste, Zero Emission
Hydrogen and ammonia replace fossil reductants. Slags, dusts and residues become saleable co-products instead of landfill.
EU–Chile Cooperation
Nineteen partners across Germany, Belgium, Greece and Chile co-developing and demonstrating technologies that can be replicated in other partner countries.
The metals Europe cannot
electrify without
Copper and lithium are listed by the EU as both critical and strategic. They are indispensable to electrification, renewable energy grids, digital infrastructure, battery storage and e-mobility.
Yet supply is getting harder, not easier. Copper ore grades have fallen by more than 60% over the past century and average lithium brine grades by more than 50%. Ores carry rising arsenic and antimony impurities, brines are chemically complex, and sustainability standards diverge between the EU and third countries.
Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and holds major shares of global lithium reserves. Its resource base, know-how and sustainability commitment make it the natural partner to demonstrate technologies that reinforce the EU Critical Raw Materials Act — and that can later be replicated elsewhere.
Two value chains,
one integrated portfolio
Five breakthrough technologies advance from laboratory proof (TRL 4) to large-scale demonstration (TRL 6–7) by the end of the project, piloted at partner facilities in Europe and Chile.
Copper Value Chain
From geometallurgical prediction and selective flotation of arsenic-bearing minerals, through hydrogen- and ammonia-based slag reduction and a zero-waste pyrometallurgical route, to bioleaching, purification and electrowinning of 4–5N cathodes — with arsenic, antimony, molybdenum, germanium and other minor metals recovered as saleable products rather than hazardous waste.
Lithium Value Chain
A brine-flexible platform combining Direct Lithium Extraction — alumina-based adsorption, ion exchange, solvent extraction, electrodialysis, membrane distillation and nanofiltration — with downstream refining to battery-grade Li2CO3 and LiOH, plus metallothermic reduction to lithium metal for next-generation cells. Designed for replication across salars, not for a single brine.
Digital Twins & Process Modelling
CFD and thermodynamic models, plus a digital-twin flowsheet of the Northern Chilean “arsenic hub” connecting the Chuquicamata smelter, the Ministro Hales roaster and the Calama plant — enabling optimal stream allocation and reliable scale-up.
Circularity & Co-Products
Slags, tailings, flue dusts and sludges are mapped, leached and valorised — into iron phosphate, magnetite, silica, and calcium-aluminate-silicate feedstock for the cement industry.
Measurable change across
the whole value chain
Projected outcomes once LiCuPlus technologies reach full industrial scale in the 2035–38 horizon.
An intercontinental,
industry-driven partnership
Nineteen organisations from Germany, Belgium, Greece and Chile cover the entire copper and lithium value chain: Chilean mining and refining leaders, European processors and end-users, engineering consultancies, and world-class research institutes.
The project is coordinated by Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg and led on the technical side by industrial partners, with work package leadership shared between European and Chilean organisations.
Follow the project as it scales up
Results, deliverables and open-access publications will be released throughout the 48-month programme and archived in the LiCuPlus Zenodo community.