Lithium resource supply limited enterprise development is fiercely competitive

The lithium battery is still the material of the first choice for electric car batteries, which is an amazing thing.

Designing the latest version of electric vehicles (EVs) and indeed addressing global dependence on oil is one of the world's greatest scientific breakthroughs of the past decade. Even Toyota, the long-time communicator of hydrogen fuel cell technology, announced last year that it is a fast electric car that uses lithium-ion batteries.

But what about disrupting the lithium supply chain from within? Industry insiders know that the lithium supply chain has been in three stages since the material began mining underground in the early part of the last century.

The first stage was the limited supply of lithium for mining spodumene, which was disrupted when the Chilean company began to obtain lithium carbonate by evaporating the brine of the Atacama Desert Salt Lake in the 1990s. The third phase was due to the development of lithium-ion batteries in electronic components and mobile phones, which created sufficient demand for rock mining again. But what else can create the fourth stage?

Among the studies published in the US Geological Survey's manual, there is an outstanding resource that has not yet been developed. Lithium is found in bromine brines extracted from major oil and gas producing regions of the United States, such as Arkansas and North Dakota. The Smackover oil field brine in Arkansas is known as the largest source of lithium in these brines and may contain 1 million metric tons of lithium reserves, about one-third of the reserves of Atacama Salt Lake in Chile.

Arkansas supplies about half of the world's bromine from oilfield brine and sells the chemicals globally to produce flame retardant materials and agrochemicals. The remaining tail brine, which may contain up to 400 milligrams per liter of lithium, is re-injected into the ground. According to data from the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission, the average annual production from 2010 to 2016 was 42.6 million cubic meters.

To make this puzzle even more interesting, Albemarle Corp., the world's largest lithium producer, competed with Germany's Lanxess and Tetra Technologies to become one of the world's largest bromine suppliers. The biggest question is why Albemarle is investing heavily in lithium resources in Australia and Chile because it has a lot of lithium resources and is included in one of its own industrial materials.

Albemarle announced in 2011 that it has developed a proprietary technology to extract lithium from bromine brine at its facility in Magnolia, Arkansas. Since then, the giant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been surprised by this development.

Albemarle is not alone in developing this new horizon lithium resource. Standard Pure Lithium Ltd. (TSXV: SLL|OTCQX: STLHF), a former Pure Energy Minerals executive, signed an agreement with Tetra Technologies to create a pilot plant in Arkansas to test the company's tail brine feedstock. Pure Energy has developed a proprietary new processing technology in a project near the Clayton Valley Lithium Mine in Nevada, led by Standard Lithium CEO Robert Mintak, and an agreement with Tesla Motors.

A method of extracting lithium from bromide brine was found to be a huge victory for any company with scientific expertise to accomplish this feat. Any such company will avoid all the huge capital expenditures and hassles and develop a new green space, whether it is salt lake mining or hard rock mining. This lithium is included in existing industrial materials in one of the most mature industrial centers in the United States.

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