The use of lithium in batteries for everything from cars to laptops has become increasingly prominent in recent years and will only grow, especially as petrol and diesel vehicles are gradually phased out. But the task of sourcing it and extracting it is a major concern.

Part of the concern is environmental; the very process of extracting a material meant to make energy production and road transport greener is itself harmful, because it is water intensive, causes pollution and because global shipping of it has a large carbon footprint.

A second concern is that China has too much power and influence over sources, both through its economic and mining partnerships with lithium-rich nations from the global south, or its vast refining capacity, which easily outstrips that in the west.

Lithium Boss Pessimistic Over Pivot Away From China

Speaking to the Financial Times this month, Kent Masters, the chief executive of the world’s leading lithium producer Albermarle, expressed pessimism over the idea that it is possible to “pivot to the west”, due mainly to the current low prices on the global lithium market, down 80 per cent on a year ago due to the tough economic climate and falling electric vehicle sales.

Because new entrants “are not being incentivised to enter the market” by such circumstances, keeping up with China is going to be hard and even the US is “absolutely” at risk of failing to compete.

This may all sound rather gloomy, even at a time when large reserves of lithium are being found in the West, a prime US example being a major recent discovery in Arkansas.

However, this new US find may not be quite the supply-side panacea some might imagine, as the lithium is dissolved in brines and may be hard to extract at a commercially viable price.

It is for that reason that new extraction technologies could provide a critical advance, especially at a time when lower lithium prices threaten to make the exploitation of such reserves uneconomical.

A New Extraction Solution?

This is why one remarkable new advance could be a game-changer. Earlier this month, Watercycle Technologies, a spin-off company from the University of Manchester, revealed it had established an effective way of extracting lithium from wastewater.

Taking brines sourced in the UK, it had managed to produce large quantities of high-purity lithium carbonate crystals, using its Direct Lithium Extraction and Carbonisation (DLEC) technology at its plant in Runcorn.

Chief technical officer and founder of the firm Dr Ahmed Abdelkarim said: “These results mark yet another technological breakthrough by our DLEC™ technology, one of the first in Europe to produce such quantities of lithium carbonate crystals.” 

He noted that several other companies have partnered in the project and expressed his thanks to them, which includes Cornish Lithium, a firm that has been working on extracting some of the richest deposits of lithium to be found anywhere in Europe, both from hard rock and thermal brines.

As such, this represents a further advancement in lithium extraction technology, which could make the process more efficient and therefore increasingly cost-effective, counterbalancing what may be a relatively short-lived drop in prices as the economic cycle turns and lithium demand increases.

The Geopolitical Angle

Of course, it might conversely be argued that lithium prices will stay lower if a combination of abundant potential supply and technological developments making extraction easier can guarantee there is a huge amount of it available, to the point where even with rising demand it ceases to be a particularly scarce resource.

However, the world is a bit more complex than that and there is a significant possibility that a heightened trade war between the US and China might lead to the latter making increased efforts to assert leverage in the area of rare earths.

This, combined with political tensions over matters like Taiwan and China’s tacit support for Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine, could mean the West has to pivot away from China, just as Europe has sought to replace oil and gas supplies from Russia.

At that point, brine extraction technologies may become extremely useful; as will a ramping up of lithium processing facilities.

While brine extraction may be of obvious importance in Arkansas, it appears set for a large role in the UK’s lithium mining sector, which is on the brink of starting production.

Cornish Lithium recently opened its own demonstration facility, highlighting what can be done and why the days when Britain exported 100 per cent of its lithium will soon be at an end, with chief executive Jeremy Wrathall noting that there is “enough beneath our feet in Cornwall to supply over half of what the electric vehicle industry needs.”