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Extraction[edit]
Lithium and its compounds were historically isolated and extracted from hard rock but by the 1990s mineral springs, brine pools, and brine deposits had become the dominant source.[citation needed] Most of these were in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia.[1] Large lithium-clay deposits under development in the McDermitt caldera (Nevada, United States) require concentrated sulfuric acid to leach lithium from the clay ore.[2]
By early 2021, much of the lithium mined globally comes from either "spodumene, the mineral contained in hard rocks found in places such as Australia and North Carolina"[3] or from the salty brine pumped directly out of the ground, as it is in locations in Chile.[3][4] In Chile's Salar de Atacama, the lithium concentration in the brine is raised by solar evaporation in a system of ponds.[4] The enrichment by evaporation process may require up to one-and-a-half years, when the brine reaches a lithium content of 6%.[4] The final processing in this example is done near the city of Antofagasta on the coast where pure lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, and lithium chloride are produced from the brine.[4]
Low-cobalt cathodes for lithium batteries are expected to require lithium hydroxide rather than lithium carbonate as a feedstock, and this trend favors rock as a source.[5][6][7]
The use of electrodialysis and electrochemical intercalation has been proposed to extract lithium compounds from seawater (which contains lithium at 0.2 parts per million), but it is not yet commercially viable.[8][9][10]
Developing Extraction Methods[edit]
As demand for lithium increases, alternative methods for extraction are gaining popularity. Methods that are gaining traction are both geothermal brine water extraction, and seawater lithium extraction.
Geothermal Lithium
Geothermal plants produce energy by pumping high-temperature groundwater up to the surface where the steam drives a turbine. The brine water from this process is then recycled back down into the ground to be reheated and reprocessed.[11] A developing method for lithium extraction, as well as other valuable minerals, is to process geothermal brine water through an electrolytic cell, located within a membrane, to recover valuable minerals. This environmentally sustainable process yields high concentrations of lithium that are also located in convenient locations for transport to processing plants. This can result in a highly profitable and economical process for the extraction of lithium. [12]
Seawater Lithium
If it becomes economically viable, ocean seawater offers a fast amount of lithium.[13] A developing method is using organic ion-selective cells within a membrane that is able to collect lithium either by use of electric field or a concentration difference.[13] The challenge for this method, like desalinization, is producing enough lithium at a high enough rate to prove it economical. Another issue with this method is that the lithium is still dissolved within water and must undergo further treatment to extract metallic or solid lithium. [12]
Edit summary: Copied from Lithium
- ^ "Mineral Commodity Summaries 2021" (PDF). U.S. Geological Survey. February 2021. Retrieved 17 March 2021.
- ^ Thacker Pass Lithium Mine Project Final Environmental Impact Statement (PDF) (Technical report). Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. December 4, 2020. DOI-BLM-NV-W010-2020-0012-EIS. Retrieved March 16, 2021.
- ^ a b Patterson, Scott; Ramkumar, Amrith (9 March 2021). "America's Battery-Powered Car Hopes Ride on Lithium. One Producer Paves the Way". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 12 March 2021. Retrieved 13 March 2021.
- ^ a b c d Cabello, J (2022). "Reserves, resources and lithium exploration in the salt flats of northern Chile". Andean Geology. 49 (2): 297–306. doi:10.5027/andgeoV49n2-3444] (inactive 31 December 2022).
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2022 (link) - ^ Cafariello, Joseph (10 March 2014). "Lithium: A Long-Term Investment Buy Lithium!". wealthdaily.com. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 2015-04-24.
- ^ Kaskey, Jack (16 July 2014). "Largest Lithium Deal Triggered by Smartphones and Teslas". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 2015-04-24.
- ^ Marcelo Azevedo, Nicolò Campagnol, Toralf Hagenbruch, Ken Hoffman, Ajay Lala, Oliver Ramsbottom (June 2018). "Lithium and cobalt – a tale of two commodities". McKinsey. p. 9. Archived from the original on 11 December 2019. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "Lithium Extraction from Seawater through Pulsed Electrochemical Intercalation". Joule. 4 (7): 1459–1469. 2020. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2020.05.017. S2CID 225527170. Archived from the original on 13 March 2021. Retrieved 26 December 2020.
{{cite journal}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter|authors=(help) - ^ "Innovative lithium recovery technique from seawater by using world-first dialysis with a lithium ionic superconductor". Desalination. 359: 59–63. 2015. doi:10.1016/j.desal.2014.12.018.
{{cite journal}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter|authors=(help) - ^ Robert F. Service (July 13, 2020). "Seawater could provide nearly unlimited amounts of critical battery material". Science. Archived from the original on 13 January 2021. Retrieved 26 December 2020.
- ^ Nardini, Isabella (2022), Hafner, Manfred; Luciani, Giacomo (eds.), "Geothermal Power Generation", The Palgrave Handbook of International Energy Economics, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 183–194, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-86884-0_11, ISBN 978-3-030-86884-0, retrieved 2023-02-21
- ^ a b Sun, Sen; Yu, Xiaoping; Li, Mingli; Duo, Ji; Guo, Yafei; Deng, Tianlong (2020-02-20). "Green recovery of lithium from geothermal water based on a novel lithium iron phosphate electrochemical technique". Journal of Cleaner Production. 247: 119178. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119178. ISSN 0959-6526.
- ^ a b Yang, Sixie; Zhang, Fan; Ding, Huaiping; He, Ping; Zhou, Haoshen (2018-09-19). "Lithium Metal Extraction from Seawater". Joule. 2 (9): 1648–1651. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2018.07.006. ISSN 2542-4351.