Fueling ideas, driving change. Innovation@Vulcan.
We believe innovation is key to our success and we are proud to be part of a worldwide innovation network, well connected to the geothermal and lithium world.
We are convinced: Innovation is key.
Becoming Europe’s leading sustainable lithium business and enabling energy security through geothermal energy is our mission. For this unique commercial approach, Vulcan reconciles proven technologies. We aim to provide lithium and baseload renewable heat and power with a very low environmental impact, compared to conventional methods. Hence, innovation is key to our success.
How we want to reach this:
- Gaining a comprehensive understanding of reservoir properties to optimise development and to assess and control reservoir productivity, ensuring effective risk management
- Efficiently producing and delivering baseload renewable heat and electricity
- Efficiently extracting lithium from geothermal brine with a carbon neutral footprint
We only have one planet We are protective.
During all our activities harming neither people nor environment has the highest priority. These are our innovation action fields.
Optimising Resource Assessment and Site Development
Our innovation projects aim to optimise our assessment technologies to find the best access points to the resource. By enhancing our site development processes, i.e., drilling and drilling waste removal, we will minimise our environmental impact and ensure groundwater and biodiversity protection.
One project strengthens our assessment technologies to optimise geothermal resource assessment by using data based de-risking methods and decision making. Expected key results:
- Reducing risks of seismicity and mitigating environmental impact by reliable subsurface characterisation based on comprehensive key geological data sets
- Cost effective yet reliable designs for strategy solution
- Foster public acceptance towards geothermal production using more elaborate insights underpinned by enhanced data quality
Enhancing Energy Production and Brine Control
Geothermal energy has been used ever since the time of ancient Roman. However, fully harnessing hydrothermal energy from deeper subsurface reservoirs requires advanced understanding and technology. To use geothermal energy as a widespread, reliable, and safe source of baseload heat and power, it is essential to study the subsurface mechanisms in detail. This includes understanding how to efficiently and safely extract the key medium—brine—from deep reservoirs while maintaining system stability and sustainability.
- To maximise the thermal energy production and the power plant availability by controlled maintenance shutdowns
- To minimise waste and loss of electricity and heat
- Furthermore, increasing the flexibility of geothermal production allows us to meet seasonal demands for heat.
Lithium resource efficient extraction
We are aiming to produce the world’s first sustainable lithium product. To achieve this, we developed our own sorbent VULSORB® and we are establishing an environmentally friendly production process for this sorbent material with
- High lithium recovery/high sorbent capacity/high selectivity towards lithium
- Long lifetime
- Recyclable starting materials
We are part of a worldwide Innovation Network.
We are proud to be part of a worldwide innovation network, well connected to the geothermal and lithium world.
Most of our innovation projects are funded by national agencies and the European Union.
Vulcan has innovation in its DNA. We are convinced that innovation is the key to our success and we are working on a better world of tomorrow every day.
We follow our Innovation process.
Our dedicated Innovation Process ensures a systematic, comprehensive, group-wide procedure of how to:
- Identify development and optimisation needs using our Innovation Roadmap
- Align project proposals with the Vulcan Innovation Strategy
- Observation of decision making steps
- Share development and foresight insights within our organisation and into our business
- Disseminate our findings externally
- While maintaining a lean administration for all those activities
Determined for a better tomorrow Sustainability is our purpose.
Sustainability is the cornerstone upon which Vulcan was founded and we are committed to being a leader in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives and reporting. Proudly disruptive, Vulcan’s diverse team comes from all over the globe, united by a passion for environmentalism and science. We aim to help decarbonise the electric vehicle industry.
