Enough lithium in Arkansas to supply the world’s EVs

Is lithium the new gold mine for Arkansas after oil? Researchers have discovered that an underground brine reservoir in the southern US state may contain as much as 5 to 19 million tons of lithium.

Lithium is a crucial raw material for electric vehicle batteries. The amount of lithium in the Arkansas beds would be more than enough to meet the projected 2030 global demand nine times over.

DLE technology

In a geological area known as the Smackover Formation, researchers from the United States Geological Survey, using water testing and machine learning, have determined that 5 to 19 million tons of lithium might be in the soil.

Several companies, including US oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are launching projects to start producing lithium in the Smackover Formation, which stretches across parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. It is not yet clear whether the lithium harvesting could be profitable. The lithium is contained in brine, water almost or entirely saturated with salt.

Further research should clarify whether the lithium-bearing brine can be pumped up from reservoirs about 3,000 meters underground and purified while the water is sent back underground. Such processing techniques, known as direct lithium extraction (DLE), generally cost more than conventional methods.

Those more traditional methods include, for example, placing brine in large artificial ponds until the liquid evaporates, leaving only the minerals. This process, used mostly in Chile and Argentina, two of the world’s largest lithium producers, is much cheaper but takes much longer and may affect water levels, freshwater supplies, and a critical wetland ecosystem.

DLE technology is described as more environmentally friendly. Still, climate activists say the technology is largely untested and question the danger of using it at scale and how it could affect the water supply.

Impressive amount

Otherwise, the amount of lithium discovered in Arkansas soil is impressive: it could make up 36% to 136% of the current US lithium reserve estimate. Although it may take mining and energy companies several more years to perfect the new technology, ExxonMobile, for example, hopes to begin lithium production in Arkansas by 2027. By 2030, it would produce enough lithium to meet the needs of about a million EVs a year.

Currently, lithium comes mainly from South America and Australia. Much of the silver-white metal is then processed in China, which buys deposits around the world and consequently dominates the market for the production of batteries for EVs – although there are already EVs that run on a lithium-free battery, namely a sodium-ion battery.

Apart from Europe, the US is also putting more and more effort into mining the commodity to become less independent from China. Recently, large amounts of lithium have been identified in and around the Salton Sea in Southern California, as well as a volcanic crater on the border between Nevada and Oregon.

Global lithium demand last year was less than 1 million tons – about 3 to 10 kg of lithium is needed per EV. According to market specialists, the growth of the EV market will account for more than 90% of lithium demand by 2030 and rise to more than 3 million tons.

Criticism

Nevertheless, the mining of lithium has also been heavily criticized. According to several environmental specialists and researchers, private EVs are a false solution to climate change that benefits the planet’s most polluting economies.

A report from the Climate and Community Project, a progressive climate policy think tank, also found last year that expanding public transportation infrastructure and reducing car battery sizes could reduce lithium demand to 90% by 2050 in the US.

A similar report on how the UK government should intervene to reduce demand for critical minerals was published just this week. If the size of the UK’s larger EV batteries were reduced by 30%, the UK’s lithium demand could be cut by 17%. This would save 75 million tons of rock mined for lithium by 2040—the equivalent of 19 Wembley Stadiums full of rock.