The United States gets most of its lithium-ion batteries from China, which has led at times to supply chain challenges. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The U.S. is sitting on some of the biggest lithium deposits in the world—at least 14 million tons, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Given that demand for the metal is forecast to increase by a factor of five or even 10 times, addressing local availability is a key challenge to energy security. Ihor Hlova, a scientist at the Critical Materials Innovation (CMI) Hub at Ames National Laboratory, is leading research to address the problem.
One of the issues said, Hlova, is that the lithium in the United States is tied up in a rock-hard mineral called spodumene, lithium aluminum inosilicate, LiAl(SiO₃)₂. Extraction of lithium from spodumene involves a series of expensive and energy-intensive steps that emit unwanted greenhouse gases and result in hazardous waste streams. The two-step process involves heating the mineral ore twice.
The technique is used for a few cases like making aluminum hydride, used for hydrogen storage. It’s also used to decrease the resistance of chemicals to conversion, breaking down minerals so they can be processed in one heat treatment instead of a multi-step process.
However, mechanochemistry is not recommended for all reactions, especially in those instances where the crystalline structure of the final product needs to be preserved.
“Right now, we are not extracting lithium from our spodumene reserves as much as we could, because the technology is quite expensive,” Hlova said. “If we could develop and scale this green method for extraction, that would prove very helpful to extract lithium from the deposit that we have in the U.S. and we would have our own steady source of lithium, which is a critical strategic material.”
As part of next steps, Hlova and his team will work with CMI Team member Colorado School of Mines to scale up the laboratory experiments. “We will then have baseline data to perform techno-economical analysis and life cycle assessment,” Hlova said, “which will show us how commercially viable this approach is and what impact it has on the environment.”
Link to the full story: Shaking up ore to release valuable lithium