Arkansas has lithium reserves that could be large enough to meet global demand for electric vehicle batteries, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
It is estimated that there could be between 5 and 19 million tons of lithium under southwest Arkansas. That would be enough to supply nine times the amount of the key material needed globally for car batteries in 2030, the USGS says.
Lithium is a key ingredient for rechargeable batteries used in electric vehicles and all types of devices. As the United States tries to limit greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change by encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles, the Biden administration has made it an priority to build domestic supply chains for critical minerals, including lithium. The United States may already have all the lithium it needs and then some, according to a recent study shows, if companies can develop new technologies to take advantage of it.
Enough to supply nine times the amount of key material needed globally
“Lithium is a critical mineral for the energy transition, and the potential for increased U.S. production to replace imports has implications for employment, manufacturing, and supply chain resilience,” said USGS Director David Applegate. in a yesterday's press release.
The lithium binds to the salty brine of the Smackover Formation, a geological formation made of permeable limestone that extends across parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. The formation is the result of an ancient sea and is also a historic site for oil and gas production.
Until recently, this lithium-rich brine was thought to be wastewater from oil and operations. Now, companies are trying to develop technologies to profitably extract lithium.
ExxonMobil is reportedly ready to strike. The company plans start production in 2027 and he has already done it exploratory wells drilled in Arkansas, He New York Times information. The fossil fuel giant declared its ambitions to become a “major” supplier of lithium for electric vehicles last year after purchasing drilling rights on 120,000 acres of land within the Smackover Formation in Arkansas.
“We know we have an attractive resource. We're working to understand that cost equation, understand the supply and demand landscape,” said Dan Ammann, president of ExxonMobil's low-carbon solutions business. He New York Times.
The company can use traditional oil and gas drilling techniques to reach lithium-rich salt water trapped 10,000 feet underground. But it has to develop a new technology called direct lithium extraction (DLE) to separate lithium from water using chemical solvents or filters.
That's supposed to be a lot. fastest method to extract lithium than the traditional way of leaving the brine in ponds until the water evaporates. Another potential benefit of DLE is that it would consume less energy than conventional hard rock mining for lithium. To be sure, there are still concerns about the environmental impact all of these methods pose, ranging from how much land and water they use to what to do with the toxic waste left behind.
Moving lithium production to the United States would also be a global game-changer. Most lithium today comes from Australia and South America. Fair 5 percent American lithium producers met global demand in 2021. California's Salton Sea also contains a large amount of lithium-rich brine.
The potential in Arkansas still depends on whether lithium reserves will end up being commercially recoverable, the USGS says. The agency used machine learning to produce the first estimate of the amount of lithium available in brine from the Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas, in collaboration with the Office of the State Geologist of the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment. They analyzed new brine samples in a laboratory and compared them with data from historical oil and gas production water samples from the Water database produced by the USGS. A machine learning model used that data to predict lithium concentrations across the region.
“We have not estimated what is technically recoverable based on newer methods of extracting lithium from brines,” Katherine Knierim, a hydrologist and lead researcher on the study, said in the news release.
