Lithoz and Evove partner on Separonics technology to redefine lithium extraction using ceramic AM

Lithoz, the Austrian ceramic 3D printing specialist, has partnered with UK-based water filtration technology company Evove to apply Lithoz's Lithography-based Ceramic Manufacturing (LCM) technology to lithium brine extraction. The collaboration integrates Lithoz's high-precision ceramic membrane filter segments, produced with customizable porosity and internal flow channels, into Evove's Separonics filtration architecture. These ceramic elements, up to one meter in length, are designed to replace slow evaporation ponds with modular, chemically resistant filtration systems that withstand aggressive brines containing high salt concentrations, metals, hydrocarbons, and extreme pH and temperature ranges. Lithoz CEO Johannes Homa framed the initiative as a move away from "19th-century production methods for 21st-century technology," while CTO Johannes Benedikt noted that ceramic AM parts will be part of the answer to sustainability and climate challenges.

This partnership targets a structural inefficiency in the lithium supply chain: conventional brine extraction relies on land-intensive evaporation ponds that take months to years to concentrate lithium salts, disrupt local water tables, and often require transcontinental transport to centralized refineries. By replacing that process with modular, AM-enabled ceramic filtration, Lithoz and Evove aim to deliver faster processing, lower energy use, and more precise lithium separation at the extraction site. The move fits the broader pattern of ceramic AM finding industrial traction in chemically aggressive environments where polymers and metals degrade — a niche that has historically limited ceramic AM to medical implants and high-temperature tooling. Here, the technology is being applied to a high-growth energy vertical, where global lithium demand is accelerating due to electric vehicles and grid-scale storage. The partnership also demonstrates a recurring play in AM: a specialist hardware maker (Lithoz) pairing with a domain expert (Evove) to embed AM components into existing industrial infrastructure, rather than requiring a full system replacement.

For Lithoz, this deal extends its LCM platform beyond medical and dental applications into a scalable energy-sector use case with clear volume potential. The company must now demonstrate that its ceramic membranes can achieve consistent filtration performance at field scale, and that the cost per filtered liter competes with conventional methods. For the AM industry, the partnership offers a concrete example of how ceramic AM can solve a material-specific industrial problem — not as a headline technology, but as an embedded component in a larger process. The practical next step is pilot deployment at a brine extraction site, which will test whether the ceramic elements hold up under continuous operation and whether the modular Separonics architecture can be replicated across multiple geographies.