Lithium: The Element of the Future

The salar de Uyuni is the biggest salt flat in the world and lies in the heart of southern America, next to the Bolivian Andes- it stretches 100km across at an altitude of 3600m, and holds the largest reserve of lithium in the world.
 

The flat holds around 1/3 of all lithium on the planet, and this is due to the aridity of the area- leaving surface water to be baked by the sun, causing high levels of evaporation, and therefore creating a mineral-rich brine that flows under the salt desert’s crusty surface.  In addition to this, magma currents which are high in lithium are also aiding the vast natural abundance of the element, creating a geologically unique lithium resource, which in the future could power most of the transportation in the world.
 

The main method of extraction:

·         Drill into the lithium-concentrated brine channels 50m beneath the surface which is very quick but expensive

·         Place the brine into evaporation pools, where the sun evaporates the water and makes a concentrated lithium salt- cheap but slow, works at 7mm/day

Lithium has significant global interest now, as there are huge plans to use it for a less harmful energy resource than fossil fuels. This change happened in 1991, when Sony released the first ever portable gadget powered by a lithium-ion battery. This has obviously now expanded to smartphones, laptops, cameras etc, pretty much all of our handheld devices.

 

Lithium is used for these batteries as it is the lightest metal, with only 3 protons per atom, making it easy to use as a small battery which can be used in gadgets.

Other uses of lithium include medicine; world’s leading treatment for bipolar (manic depression) uses a form of purified lithium carbonate.

However, the biggest demand of lithium at the moment is from the transportation industry- for electric cars. This is due to popular hybrid cars, which use lithium batteries, and this element is even more useful as, in its pure form, it has a similar energy density to diesel fuel.

It is important that the Bolivian government and other authorities do not exploit this natural resource as it needs to be extracted using sustainable methods to ensure that we are not compromising the abilities of  future generations to extract and use this vital element for renewable energy etc.

Carolina Valensise 04/12/15