Princeton Critical Minerals

About Princeton Critical Minerals

Princeton Critical Minerals (PCM, formerly PureLi) is a Newark, New Jersey cleantech company and a spin-off from Princeton University's WET Lab. Its mission is to bridge the global supply-demand gap for critical minerals through high-yield, data-driven operations, and it develops technologies that unlock faster lithium production, higher recovery and stronger project economics across brine evaporation ponds and next-generation extraction systems. It operates in Chile as PureLi.

The starting point is that pond evaporation remains the industry standard for the world's largest lithium reserves but relies on natural evaporation that takes 12 to 18 months, so adding capacity has meant building more ponds. Lilypad is a solar-powered evaporation-enhancement technology that boosts lithium production from existing ponds without expanding their footprint. SmartPond replaces manual pond monitoring with real-time sensing and AI-driven forecasting, turning evaporation ponds into digitally optimised assets with reduced loss, higher recovery and more intelligent operations.

E-LiTE is a modular, high-efficiency extraction system for low-concentration brines that does not need evaporation ponds, with company figures of more than 90% recovery, 80% of water reclaimed and operation on feeds as low as 50 ppm lithium. PCM describes a platform that combines evaporation-enhancement systems, real-time pond intelligence software and selective crystallisation technologies to help operators raise production capacity while reducing energy use, chemical consumption and operational complexity.

The customers are lithium brine and direct-lithium-extraction operators, with a focus on South America. PCM sells proprietary hardware and software to these operators, positioning its products around four outcomes: maximise yield, grow revenue from existing assets, minimise land, water, energy and chemical footprint, and economically unlock low-grade resources. It competes in the critical minerals and lithium extraction technology market.