RENEWABLE ENERGY
“Breakthrough Energy Ventures” has been funded (2015) by several billionaires
including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, with the aim to find
solutions for a zero-carbon future through over $1 billion in investment.
Lithium has been considered as critical metal due to its high economic and
technological importance.
LITHIUM DEMAND AND SUPPLY ISSUE
• More automakers are pledging to go all electric by 2030 or 2040.
• So, lithium demand will grow exponentially.
• Acc to Forbes, the amount of power required by electric vehicles is
estimated to be 2700 GWh
• 1 Lithium ion battery can store = 150 Watts/kg
• So, 2700 x 10^9 Wh/150 W/kg = 18 x 10^9 kg (18 billion kgs or 20
million tons!)
• The approximate amount of lithium on earth is between 30 and 90
million tons.
• We will run out eventually!!!!
LITHIUM DEMAND AND SUPPLY ISSUE
According to a 2019 report by Brookings India, even in an
optimistic scenario of 100 percent EV sales by 2030, electricity
demand from the sector would be to the tune of 97 terawatt-hour
(TWh).
In a more realistic scenario where EVs would account for 33
percent of overall sales, electricity demand would be 37 TWh.
LITHIUM DEMAND AND SUPPLY ISSUE
• That is not the only problem , however.
• Current mining extraction infrastructures can handle lower amounts
of production. Building new mines can take years. This may lead to
skyrocketing of prices of lithium and make Electric Vehicles costlier.
• Also, the sudden rise may force the shutdown of some lithium
companies. But the demand would be at an all time high because of
the need for switching to EVs to meet emissions limits.
• Hence, the way forward is development of recyclable batteries.
• For this, enhancement of performance of these batteries is the need
of the hour.
It is to note that Electric vehicle mass production started in 2011–2012 and is expected
to increase progressively between 3% and 10% from 2020 to 2025 and Lithium content
in batteries varies from 0.60 g to 4.00 g in primary batteries and from 0.35 g to 26.00 g
in secondary batteries. We can therefore anticipate what lies in the future.
Lithium-ion batteries are also the single-largest end user of lithium, at 71 percent of
global lithium consumption in 2020.
In 2017 the global demand for lithium in batteries was 87 kilotons of
lithium carbonate equivalent, this is expected to increase to 509
kilotons of lithium carbonate equivalent in 2025.
DIRECT LITHIUM EXTRACTION PROCESS
• DLE is the latest trend in extracting lithium and it typically
competes with the traditional process of using brine ponds and
an evaporation process.
• The large scale economics of DLE are still uncertain; however
for now it appears to be carving out a niche place for lower
grade brine projects, geothermal brine projects, and petroleum
brine projects.
DIRECT LITHIUM EXTRACTION PROCESS
Direct Lithium Extraction is the process of removing the Lithium
from lithium brine directly, with no evaporation and no mining
involved. DLE is a chemical process that is engineered for purity,
and therefore needs to remove 99% of impurities from to the
brine produce a concentrate. Purity is the highest importance if
the Lithium is to be sold into the battery market, rather than the
industrial Lithium market.
Companies like E3 Metal remove 99% of the impurities in a
single step and they also concentrate it. Time, value, and money
are very important and the DLE reaction takes less than 15minutes, and are able to produce a product within the day rather
than, in the salars for example, 12 to 24-months.
The Process of Development: Understanding Scale &
Economics
DLE is a very simple Ion Exchange process. It is a new
process for Lithium and the technology has taken time to
perfect. The technology is now becoming a lot more
common with several companies developing a similar
process which adds confidence for investors, and also the
process itself is more understood.
The leader in new project DLE extraction is Standard
Lithium, which is piloting their process in Arkansas. Big
companies like Livent have been using a version of DLE
for a long time.
Advantages
•Faster lithium production (takes a matter of
hours/days rather than 1 year via
evaporation ponds).
•Much smaller environmental footprint as no
need for a huge area of evaporation ponds,
hence a more favorable ESG profile.
•Not weather dependent.
•Lower water consumption (the brine is
returned to the salar after the lithium is
extracted).
•Potential to make low grade lithium projects
economically viable.
•Up to 99% lithium recovery (usually 7090%) compared to ~40% with the
conventional process.
•Can potentially produce a higher purity
battery grade lithium final product that sells
at a premium to lower grade.
Disadvantages
•Technical complexity - Several choices
in the type of DLE that can be used and
risks involved with newer technology.
•Initial CapEx may be higher and ongoing
CapEx may be higher, depending upon
the project. This depends on many
factors (location, type of DLE process,
cost of energy, any valuable by-products,
geothermal benefits etc).
Not yet tested at a large scale and over a
long time period. This means that the
economics and effectiveness over time
are still to be determined.
DIRECT LITHIUM EXTRACTION PROCESS
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3 main types of DLE
Lithium bonding (Adsorption)
Ion exchange
Solvent extraction
• Scaling up any of these techniques to full production capability
remains a challenging task. For example, developing a solid
material that bonds with just lithium is a huge challenge in
geothermal brine that contains many minerals and metals.
Successful DLE implementation will depend on expanding innovation
and creating new technologies.
DIRECT LITHIUM EXTRACTION PROCESS
• The leading DLE companies with lithium projects are POSCO,
Standard Lithium, Schlumberger, MGX Minerals, Lilac
Solutions, E3 Metal Corps and Eon Minerals.
Last year (Feb 2021), the Modi Government had confirmed the discovery
of India’s first ever traces of lithium reserves ( in igneous rock deposits)
worth 14100 tonnes in the Mandya district of Karnataka after
preliminary surveys. (by hard rock extraction of ore)
This silver-white metal is rare.
Until now, India’s Mines Ministry’s Khanij Bidesh India Limited (KABIL)
was working on acquiring mines of strategic minerals like lithium and
cobalt in countries like Chile, Argentia, Bolivia and Australia.
India currently imports all its lithium needs.
The exploratory work is meanwhile also on to possibly extract lithium from the
brine pools of Rajasthan and Gujarat and the mica belts of Odisha and
Chhattisgarh.
Some stats
Lithium is one of two commodities that has been constantly driving us humans crazy alongside
Cobalt, since the beginning of 2021 on strong demand from the electric vehicles (EV) sector.
In 2020, the average price of a battery-grade lithium carbonate was an estimated 8,000 U.S. dollars
per metric ton and is expected to have a steady growth.
In 2025, the price for 99% lithium carbonate is expected to be 7.56 U.S. dollars per kilogram.
And the global lithium demand is expected to reach 4,450 metric tons of lithium carbonate
equivalent for non-rechargeable batteries by 2025.
In 2014, The Financialist stated that demand for lithium was growing at more than 12% a
year. According to Credit Suisse, this rate exceeded projected availability by 25%.
About Lithium
Soft and silvery-white alkali metal.
The lightest metal and the lightest solid element.
It is soft enough to be cut with a knife.
Has a very low density.
Lithium is highly reactive and flammable, therefore must be stored in mineral oil.
It is never found free in nature, exists in combined forms in ocean water or from brines(by
electrolysis of lithium chloride and potassium chloride).
• Lithium can float on even the lightest hydrocarbon oils and is one of only three metals to float on
water(other two: sodium and potassium).
• Lithium is rarely found in the Solar System than 25 of the first 32 chemical elements.
• It is a primordial element produced in Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
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About Lithium
Soft and silvery-white alkali metal.
The lightest metal and the lightest solid element.
It is soft enough to be cut with a knife.
Has a very low density.
Lithium is highly reactive and flammable, therefore must be stored in mineral oil.
It is never found free in nature, exists in combined forms in ocean water or from brines(by
electrolysis of lithium chloride and potassium chloride).
• Lithium can float on even the lightest hydrocarbon oils and is one of only three metals to float on
water(other two: sodium and potassium).
• Lithium is rarely found in the Solar System than 25 of the first 32 chemical elements.
• It is a primordial element produced in Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
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How Lithium is found in Nature?
• 6Li and 7Li are the two stable natural isotopes of Lithium.
• It is widely distributed on Earth though in combined forms with matter and its
content of seawater is very large.
• 6Li and 7Li are the two stable natural isotopes of Lithium.
• It is widely distributed on Earth though in combined forms with matter and its
content of seawater is very large.
How Lithium is found in Nature?
• hese sources are less expensive to mine than from rock such as spodumene, petalite, and other lithium-bearing minerals.
• The use of electrodialysis and electrochemical intercalation has been proposed to extract lithium from seawater.
• Extraction of Lithium:
Lithium was first discovered in the mineral petalite. Lepidolite and spodumene are other common minerals which contain lithium.
• Lithium extraction can be made from:
Primary resources such as ores/minerals (spodumene, petalite and lepidolite) by acid, alkaline and chlorination processes and from brines by
adsorption, precipitation and ion exchange processes.
• Secondary resources including the industrial processes like the recovery of lithium from lithium ion batteries (LIBs).
• According to the Handbook of Lithium and Natural Calcium, “Lithium is a comparatively rare element, although it is found in many rocks and some
brines, but always in very low concentrations.
• There are a fairly large number of both lithium mineral and brine deposits but only comparatively few of them are of actual or potential commercial
value. Many are very small, others are too low in grade.”
• Also occur minutely, in numerous plants, planktons and invertebrates, at concentrations of 69 to 5,760 parts per billion (ppb) with frequent
evidences of Bioaccumulation in marine organisms.
How Lithium is found in Nature?
• Recycling of Li-ion batteries:
To fulfil the penchant demand, we hope to recycle the end-of-life lithium-ion batteries in
the future to yield Lithium in order to reuse.
• Unfortunately such technology is still in the developing phase. However a few methods
include the following:
• Hydrometallurgy is the main method to recycle lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) from spent
LIBs, leached with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and organic acid.
• Cryogenisation– The cryogenic process consists of freezing still charged batteries with
liquid nitrogen (at −163°C) before being shredded to reduce the reactivity of cells to zero.
• Direct physical processing, LIBs are discharged and disassembled to the cell level.
Mineral springs and Geothermal wells too are great sources of Lithium,
done by simple filtration.
Although an accurate estimation of worldly lithium reserves is difficult
but US Geological Survey (USGS) estimated it to be 17 million tonnes.
LI ION SELECTIVE MEMBRANE DEVELOPMENT
• A lithium ion-selective membrane, comprising a poly mer carrier, a plasticizer, a conductive
compound and a lithium ion-specific ionophoric compound, characterized in that said ionophoric
compound is dibenzyl-14-crown-4 and its derivatives and represents between 0.5 and 3% by
weight of the total composition of the membrane, the polymer carrier representing 25 to 30% by
weight of the total composition of the membrane, the plasticizer from 65 to 72% by weight of the
total composition of the membrane and the conductive com pound from 0.2 to 1.5% by weight of
the total composition of the membrane. 2. The membrane according to claim 1, characterized in
that the polymer carrier is polyvinyl chloride (PVC). 3. The membrane according to claim 1,
characterized in that the plasticizer is NPOE (o-nitrophenyl octyl ether). 4. The membrane
according to claim 1, characterized in that the conductive compound is potassium tetrakis (p-chlo
rophenyl)borate. 5. The membrane according to claim 1, characterized in that it contains 0.8 to
2% dibenzyl-14-crown-4, 27 to 30% PVC, 65 to 71% NPOE and 0.5 to 1.4% KTpCIPB, the per
centages representing the percentage of each constituent by weight of the total composition of
the membrane. 6. A method of manufacturing a lithium ion-selective membrane, comprising the
steps of completely dissolving a polymer carrier, a plasticizer, a conductive compound and
dibenzyl-14-crown-4 in tet rahydrofuran (THF) under magnetic agitation at ambi ent temperature,
and decanting a clear Solution obtained in order to crystallize it by evaporation of the THF at
ambient temperature and recovering the membrane formed. 7. A lithium ion-selective electrode,
intend
IMPORTANT MODIFICATION
• The concept of this work is to exploit 2D nanofluidic vermiculite (VCT)
channels into a morphology which can be used to control ion
transportation across the membrane selectively. Here, VCT is selected
because it has significant advantages compared with GO and other
two-dimensional structures. V