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Canadian company Volt Lithium has developed and pilot-tested a new low-cost lithium extraction method to pull this critical battery metal out of low-concentration brines. Now it plans to turn old oil fields into lithium production operations.
newatlas.com
If this method works out as planned it will vastly increase the supply of lithium which will lead to an increase in all electronic devices that need or could use battery power. This could lead to a boost in demand in the semi industry across the board as more devices that rely on battery power are built. Any thoughts or comments are appreciated.
I recall them in the news 2 years ago, and there are a couple of other novel chemistries for Li refining.
For sure, big changes to come. Lithium was a sleepy industry until 15 years ago, where drying out salty water in the altiplano then shipping concentrate to China to refine it for final assembly in Japan was a perfectly fine solution for a small market, no incentive to change. 15 years is about right for investments in new methods of refining to start to reach full production volume. Since many of these also look to be commercially viable with lower grade sources there will also be a surge in supply over the next decade.
The stage after that, making batteries, is also surprisingly capital light, about $300..500M per 10GWh/year. Assuming the plant runs 5 years (it will run longer, but new capex will be needed to update it) that is about $6 to $10 per kWh. Which is why they build battery assembly plants all around the world and the key bottleneck is refining to battery grade and shipping it. Logically the refining (not merely concentrating the ore) should be happening at sources like Australia or Chile/Boivia/Argentina, as well as potential new sources in Turkey, Germany, California. The current refining in China is not logically competitive when new cheaper processes come in, though you can be sure they will invest in having a key hold on that supply chain.
newatlas.com