The search for new geologic sources of lithium could power a clean future - battery energy storage system

The future of lithium is on electricity.
For many, cars and trucks powered by lithium batteries instead of fossil fuels are the future of transportation.
Rechargeable lithium batteries are also crucial for storing energy generated by solar and wind, and clean energy is a beacon of hope for a world worried about a rapidly changing global climate.
Driven by the expected demand for light rechargeable lithium batteries --
Power for electric vehicles, mobile phones, laptops and renewable energy storage facilities
The rocket is about to be launched.
Even before the electric car, it has been mined for decades for reasons unrelated to the battery.
It is very useful due to the physical properties of lithium, from shock-
Anti-Drug glass.
According to Frankfurt's analysis, these products accounted for nearly half of global lithium demand in 2018.
Headquartered in Deutsche Bank.
Batteries for consumer electronics such as mobile phones or laptops account for about 25% of demand.
Most of the rest are electric cars.
This breakdown will soon be broken: some forecasts show that half of the 2025 demand for lithium will come from the electric vehicle industry.
Global demand for this metal is expected to grow by at least 300% over the next 10 to 15 years, largely because sales of electric vehicles are expected to grow significantly.
At present, there are about 2 million electric vehicles driving on the road around the world;
According to industry research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the figure is expected to grow to more than 24 million by 2030.
Electric vehicle giant Tesla has been seeking lithium worldwide to sign deals with mining companies in the United States, Mexico, Canada and Australia to secure lithium supplies.
So over the past few years, the price of lithium in the global market has been on a roller coaster, soaring in 2018 due to concerns that metals may not be enough.
But Lisa Stiles, an American geologists, says these doomsday scenarios may be a bit overkill. S.
Geological Survey of Reno, NY
Lithium accounts for about 0.
Stilins said that 002% of the Earth's crust is not uncommon from a geological point of view.
The key, she added, is to know where it is concentrated economically enough for mining.
To answer this question, the researchers are looking at how the forces of wind, water, heat and time are combined with where to produce rich metal deposits.
These include flat desert basins in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia's "Lithium Triangle;
Volcanoes known in Australia, the United States and Canada as vigemati rocks; and lithium-
American clay.
Efforts to find and extract this "platinum" have also driven new fundamental geological, geophysical and hydrological studies.
Stillings and other scientists are looking at how clay and brine are formed, and how lithium may move between two deposits when it occurs in the same basin, and how lithium atoms position themselves in the chemical structure of clay.
The elemental form of lithium is soft, silver, light, with a density of about half that of water.
This is the lightest metal in the periodic table of elements.
This element is by Sweden chemist John in 1817 in Alf Henderson in August found of he is analysis a called petalite of Jorg Gray mineral.
Arfwedson found aluminum, silicon and oxygen in the minerals, which account for 96% of the mineral mass.
He determined that the remaining petals were made up of elements of a chemical nature similar to potassium and sodium.
All three elements react with other charged particles or ion heights to form salt, solid but soft at room temperature, with a low melting point and easily dissolved in water.
Due to their similarities, these elements, as well as rubidium, cesium and francium, were later classified as "base metal "().
Lithium's affinity for water helps explain how it passes through the crust and how it becomes concentrated enough to mine.
Basic formula for any kind of lithium
Abundant deposits include volcanic rocks, coupled with a large amount of water and heat, mixed together due to active tectonic action.
There are three main sources of lithium worldwide: weigmati, the UK and clay.
Most of the Weig rocks are granite formed by molten magma.
It is interesting that they often contain a large number of incompatible elements that resist the formation of solid crystals for as long as possible.
When the magma beneath the volcano cools slowly, the rock forms.
The chemical composition of magma changes over time.
When elements fall off from the liquid to form solid crystals, other elements, such as lithium, tend to hover in the liquid and become more and more concentrated.
But in the end, even if the magma cools down and crystallizes, the incompatible magma is locked into the Weijing rock.
Prior to the 1990 s, Viagra Matia in the United States was a major source of lithium.
But the extraction of lithium ore from rocks, mainly a mineral called lithium pyroxene, is costly.
In addition to the cost of actual mining, the rock must be crushed and extracted with acid and heat treatment in commercially useful forms.
In the 1990 s, a cheaper source of lithium became an option.
Just below the dry salt beaches covering large areas of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, salt, lithium-
Abundant groundwater.
Miners pump salt into the surface, isolate it into the pond, and let it evaporate in the sun.
"Mother Nature did most of the work, so it was very cheap," said stilins . ".
What is left after evaporation is a dirty yellow salt water.
Battery extraction-
Mineral miners grade lithium in the form of commercial use, especially lithium carbonate and hydroxide, adding different minerals to the brine, such as sodium carbonate and sodium hydroxide.
The reaction with these minerals results in the precipitation of different types of salt from the solution, resulting in lithium minerals.
Clay is the hardened residue of ancient mud, produced by the slow settling of tiny sediment particles, as in the lake bed. To get lithium-
Rich clay requires proper starting ingredients, especially lithium
Weijing rock and circulating groundwater contain rock.
Groundwater extracts lithium from rocks and transports it to lakes where lithium is concentrated in deposits.
It turns out that the Western United States has all the right ingredients to make lithiumrich clay.
In fact, in 2017, researchers proposed that some of the ancient supervolcanoes that became lakes, such as the Yellowstone crater.
There is a shallow magma pool under North America that provides food for Yellowstone supervolcano.
In the past 2 million years or so, Yellowstone volcano is located in northwest Wyoming (
It is the center of Yellowstone National Park. .
But the hot spots in Yellowstone are not static.
Over the past 16 million years, as the North American plate slowly slides southwest, it has crossed the still shallow magma body, leaving the crater that extends from Nevada to Yellowstone.
One of the oldest craters in Yellowstone National Park, known as McDermitt Caldera, is filled with water and later dried up, leaving behind a potential treasure trove of lithiumrich clay. Vancouver-
Headquartered in lithium, USA
The company plans to start mining operations in 2022 at a site called Thacker Pass that breaks the crater, and by 2025 it is estimated that lake beds can provide 25% of the world's lithium.
In the United States, mcdemit is "one of the very big resources that we know," says stilins.
"But there are still some obstacles that need to be removed before lithium clay competes with the British.
The recovery of lithium ore needs to be opened-
Mining the mine is more expensive than pumping salt water.
Processing clay to extract lithium carbonate or other industries-
Prepared minerals are also expensive.
Lithium America, which claims to have developed its own clean, cheap extraction process, and others have not yet proven that they will compete with salt water mining.
Several other types of lithium extraction may be coming soon, says Stillings. Lithium-
Abundant salt water can also be formed in an active geothermal area, with a lot of heat underground.
Geothermal power plants have drained overheated water to generate energy and then pumped it underground.
Some facilities are trying to extract other commercially valuable elements from the salt water, including lithium, manganese and zinc.
Fracking also includes extracting salt water from the ground that contains a large amount of dissolved metal (possibly including lithium.
Although lithium may not have a very high concentration, extraction is still economically worthwhile if it is a by-product
Products already being mined.
On December 2017, the White House issued an executive order directing the United StatesS.
The Ministry of the Interior has stepped up its research into new sources of certain "key minerals", including lithium-containing ore.
Citing economic and national security, the order directs government scientists to analyze every link in the supply chain of miners from exploration to mining to production, hoping to find new sources in the United StatesS. borders.
America is not alone in the rush to find lithium.
China, the European Union and other countries are looking for new sources.
In January, an alliance of EU researchers
The annual plan launched by the European lithium industry association requires the European lithium industry association to be competitive in the lithium industry market.
To launch a new phase of lithium research, Stiles helped at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in WashingtonC. Last December.
"We want to understand how lithium cycles through the Earth's crust," says Stillings . ".
"Lithium is very soluble;
It likes to be in the solution.
However, we have learned that it does interact with clay when it passes through the crust.
Lithium Isotope
Two, lithium. 6 and lithium-7 —
Is a way to track this exchange.
"They are like a fingerprint," said Romain Millot, a geologist at the French Geological Survey and the University of Orléans in France.
The different mass of the two isotopes affects how they move between water and solid rock: Lithium-
6 prefer to leave the water and combine in clay particles compared to lithium7.
These isotopes have also been shown to help reveal the effects of weathering, water flow and heat on lithium concentration, Millot said.
Since water is very important for the concentration of lithium, researchers are shifting from a classic "looking for ore" framework, says Scott Haick, USGS geologists in Salt Lake City.
Instead, "We need more oil.
"It's like a perspective," he said.
Scientists not only track where the deposits are, but also how they may move: where is the flow of water, where is the lithium
Abundant fluids may be trapped under a hard, non-permeable rock.
Lithium Exploration has also taken a page from the hydrological manual, using some of the industry's classic tools to track the circulation of groundwater underground to find out where lithium is
There may be a wealth of deposits in the end.
Isotopes of hydrogen, oxygen and helium are used to track how long groundwater has moved underground, and the type of rock in which water is in contact.
Faults, for example, can guide groundwater and thus may play a significant role in the formation of lithium deposits.
"This is an outstanding issue," Hynek said . ". “These are big-
High scale geological control
Lithium water.
"He submitted the data at the AGU seminar, indicating that the highest concentration of lithium in Salar de Atacama occurred near certain faults.
This suggests, he says, that faults help guide groundwater and thus accumulate sediment.
An immediate problem with lithium mining is that even "clean" energy is not completely clean.
Extracting lithium from ore and converting it into a form of commercial use such as lithium carbonate or hydroxide can produce toxic waste and leak into the environment.
Since 2009, a chemical leak in a lithium mine on the Tibetan Plateau in China has caused repeated damage to the environment, killing fish and livestock drunk from nearby rivers.
Even if Mother Nature does a lot of work, such as in the evaporation pond, it may have a negative impact on the environment.
In South America, for example, the problem is water supply.
The Lithium Triangle, including Salar de Atacama, is one of the driest places on Earth.
Mining consumes a lot of water.
This has led to a series of worrying events.
Right on the edge of Atacama Salt beach, it is home to flamingos nesting: a salty lake full of salt shrimp.
"One of the main objections to this mining activity is the impact it may have on the flamingos population," Hynek said . ".
The same source of water in the Andes also provided water for the underground lithium salt water reservoir, which eventually filled the lagoon.
In fact, water levels have fallen in some parts of the region, and indigenous communities, as well as Chilean and Argentine authorities, are on high alert, Hynek said.
"The Chilean authorities are concerned [miners]
The water level in the lagoon will also drop.
On February, Chile announced new water restrictions for miners operating in the atacamasal area.
Who should be blamed is the subject of much debate.
In addition to the exploitation of lithium salt water, the copper mine in the Andes Mountains is also very high --
Source of groundwater
A lot of water is being extracted from the system.
"Flamingos and Aboriginal communities are actually trapped in the middle," Hynek added . ".
Such a large environmental problem may hinder the future mining prospects of the region.
"You make salt water in the same area that maintains these important biodiversity habitats," said David Bott, a water scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Boutt added that so far, few studies have shown how water passes through the ground in dry areas with very low precipitation rates, such as the Lithium Triangle in South America.
"There are a lot of questions about where water comes from," such as how the flow rate passes through the ground.
"These systems may take a long time to respond to disturbances such as groundwater pumping ".
The impact of withdrawing seawater now may not be felt for decades.
"One concern is whether we will wait for 100 before some bad things happen," Boutt said.
Science News.