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Power United States

This Arkansas Town Could Become the Epicenter of a U.S. Lithium Boom (msn.com) 53

Posted by EditorDavid from the towns-called-Hope dept.
"If the U.S. is to ease its dependence for lithium on other countries such as China, it may need this quiet corner of southwest Arkansas to lead the way," reports the Wall Street Journal, visiting the "thick-wooded back roads" and "crisscrossing fields where oil drillers gave up long ago" in Magnolia, Arkansas. (Population: 11,105) Exxon Mobil, a new player in the hunt for U.S. lithium, is planning to build one of the world's largest lithium processing facilities not far from Magnolia, with a capacity to produce 75,000 to 100,000 metric tons of lithium a year, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May that Exxon purchased 120,000 gross acres in the area for a price tag of more than $100 million. A consultant for the seller had estimated the prospect could have the equivalent of 4 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent, enough to power 50 million EVs... To push the project forward, Exxon will have to profitably scale up the technology used to siphon lithium from brine, which for years has been an elusive goal across the industry... Exxon believes it can leverage its engineering prowess to become a low-cost domestic supplier of lithium, and has had discussions with battery and EV manufacturers, people familiar with the matter said. The company would also benefit from green-energy subsidies included in the Inflation Reduction Act, which allows for tax credits of 10% of the cost of producing lithium.

Exxon, which is generally bullish about the future of oil and natural gas, is also preparing for a future less dependent on gasoline. Last year, it projected light-duty vehicle demand for internal combustion engine fuels could peak by 2025, while EVs, hybrids and vehicles powered by fuel cells could grow to more than 50% of new car sales by 2050.
"Other companies including Standard Lithium and Tetra Technologies are planning to build capacity in the area..."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
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This Arkansas Town Could Become the Epicenter of a U.S. Lithium Boom More

This Arkansas Town Could Become the Epicenter of a U.S. Lithium Boom

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  • We dont need another town to become toxically uninhabitable. Do lithium mines contaminate groundwater forever once abandoned like other mines?

    Even if batteries regained 20-50% in size/weight a cast majority of use cases wouldn't be affected.

    • Re:Picher, OK? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday July 23, 2023 @10:17AM (#63708852)

      They're going to pump brine out of the ground - I believe by pumping vast quantities of fresh water in first - and then let it evaporate so they can collect the sludge. It should have more that's worth extracting than just lithium.

      I guess the real question is what are they going to do with all the stuff that gets concentrated in the evaporation process that isn't worth separating and selling? And the secondary question would be where they're going to get all the required water and what will be the environmental impact of that?

      I'm crazy but I believe answering those questions to the satisfaction of the EPA and the population ought to be a prerequisite to allowing the operation to proceed. Leaving big ponds of toxic sludge should not be considered an acceptable option.

      • They're going to pump brine out of the ground - I believe by pumping vast quantities of fresh water in first - and then let it evaporate so they can collect the sludge.

        So... where will all that water come from?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          Why would you be pumping in freshwater and diluting your brine? That makes zero sense. Deep groundwater is generally already highly pressurized, and if it's not, that's what pumps are for.

          This isn't enhanced oil recovery, where you've already taken out most of what's in a reservoir and are adding in a substance which is non-miscable with your target product to get the rest of it.

          Freshwater is used in lithium refining, but only small quantities of it.

          Honestly, it's hard to think of a lower environmental im

        • No, the brine is already rich in BROMINE, which is what they get out of it now, and also happens to have some amount of lithium. All you do is drill down 8000 feet and let the water flow. Dealing with brine is part and parcel for the oil industry, you get salty brine from oil wells all the time. In this case, there was little or no oil but bromine is valuable. And now, lithium is "valuable enough" that someone wants to try to recover it as well.

          • OK, so where will all that bromine-rich water go?

            • They will probably extract the bromine, which is valuable, and then inject whatever is left back into the ground in a different part of the formation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        I guess the real question is what are they going to do with all the stuff that gets concentrated in the evaporation process that isn't worth separating and selling?

        You mean, salt? That's what dried brine is: salt. The stuff you refine for food salt, use for industrial processes, or use to melt ice off roads.

        And salt is not "sludge".

        • Salts can be a lot more than sodium chloride. There will be more in the output than lithium.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rei ( 128717 )

            And? The same applies to salt deposits in general. What does it matter if there's some calcium chloride or magnesium chloride or some sulfates or carbonates or whatnot in there? It's brine. Saltwater.

            And of course, since you're doing selective progressive deposition, you can largely separate them out in the process anyway.

        • Here is the site on google maps, where they extract the brine and concentrate up the bromine. They are not "drying" anything like you're imagining.

          https://www.google.com/maps/se... [google.com]

    • We dont need another town to become toxically uninhabitable. Do lithium mines contaminate groundwater forever once abandoned like other mines?

      If it's going to be mined better it be done in the west where we can do environmental oversight.

      Even if batteries regained 20-50% in size/weight a cast majority of use cases wouldn't be affected.

      No lithium batteries doesn't mean the roads are full with EVs with less range in 10-20 years, it means the roads are full with a lot more old ICEs in 10-20 years.

    • This town has had operations extracting bromine from this brine for decades. Lithium-enriched byproducts are considered a waste product.

      Source: I live near there.

  • Some advice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday July 23, 2023 @10:00AM (#63708816)

    I know it's not going to happen, BUT:

    Arkansas... don't just mine this stuff, destroy the local environment, and fuck over the locals.

    Mine it with some reasonable care for the environment, process it, make the end product and sell it. Vertical integration. It's better for everyone including the investor class, it just takes a little more time and effort.

    Or... raise a generation of miners, support church over actual education, and after a brief bit of highly localized financial prosperity for a handful of locals things get worse for everyone except maybe a half-dozen at the very peak of the pyramid who will live somewhere they don't have to deal with the problems.

    Anyone taking bets on which path gets chosen?

    • Well lets look at who Arkansas regularly votes for hopefully people who will apply responsible and measured policies that balance the environment and communities along with the business interests at play.

      Or do they frequenty elect a cadre of culture warriors who think the priorities of the business supercede that of both the environment and the citizens who live in that environment?

      Maybe this is where electing a governor who was an MIT educated nuclear engineer and urban planner would be a really nice asset

      • Re:Some advice (Score:4, Funny)

        by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday July 23, 2023 @10:19AM (#63708856)

        And a couple of well-placed politicians will magically get wealthier.

        That is my expectation as well, and it's so sad that you can see it coming from light years away but the people being hurt by this kind of activity will fight to protect it.

        • That is exactly the way America was set up to work, and the system works pretty well to this day.
          What do you suggest the people of Arkansas do? Elect a democrat? You must be joking.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        After a brief check, there isn't a lot of federal or state regulation on ground water. So Exxon is free to destroy as much of the environment as they can pay off the state pols to look the other way. Given their current excuse for a governor, I expect a few thou should ice any objections from her.

        If Exxon plays its cards right, they can claim their operation was prophesied in the Bible. Of course the Bible was okay with selling off your daughters to pay off a debt, so maybe that's not such a great source of

        • After a brief check, there isn't a lot of federal or state regulation on ground water. So Exxon is free to destroy as much of the environment as they can pay off the state pols to look the other way.

          I'm not sure why you think refining lithium out of brine is likely to destroy the environment. Of all of the thousand things we dig into the earth to mine, this is one of the easiest and least destructive.

          What's left behind is mostly salt. Even if they didn't collect that and sell it-- in the US we routinely dump millions of tons of salt on the road every winter snowstorm. Even the worst case disposal of the salt wouldn't hold a candle to the environmental effect of even a mild winter storm.

      • Bill Clinton used to be governor of Arkansas (with the help of his patrons, the Walton family). That goes to show you the quality of character of the people they will elect.

    • Arkansas is the middle of the bible belt

    • > Arkansas... don't just mine this stuff, destroy the local environment, and fuck over the locals.

      From other articles... (I refuse to allow MSN javascript permissions. Microsoft tracks me enough tyvm and if your page can't be displayed without javascript then I'll just go elsewhere...) these are old oil and gas wells that they can extract brine from. Not only has the area already been developed for mining, but it is still actively being used for bromine extraction. The plan is to also extract the lithium

  • Lithium boom? I see what you did there...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      Did what? Lithium isn't explosive. Lithium metal is flammable, but nobody is producing lithium metal; they're producing lithium carbonate. Just like how sodium metal is flammable but sodium carbonate is just washing soda.

      And for the record, lithium-ion batteries don't contain lithium metal either. What burns is mainly the electrolyte solvent, generally organic carbonates with combustion properties similar to common hydrocarbon solvents, and indeed, to petrol itself.

  • One of two things is going to happen: A) if it happens, it will become so expensive due to bureaucratic nonsense or B) it won't happen... due to bureaucratic nonsense.

    • Exxon buys the land, takes the subsidies, does a half ass attempt to mine lithium, gives up. They sit on the land for a few years and then sell to developers for 3x the purchase price.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Or the environmental impacts are so onerous it becomes too expensive to proceed....nah, it's Arkansas, they don't give shit about the "woke" environment when there is money to be made. And there are not a lot of Fed. or Ark. State regs on the use of groundwater, they can pollute as much as their dark little hearts desire, so your bureaucratic nonsense is just nonsense.

  • "This Arkansas Town Could Become the Epicenter of a U.S. Lithium Boom" Do a lot of people there own hoverboards they bought on Ali Express?
  • Should call this one: " The gem hunters [slashdot.org] had no luck in Maine. So they moved to a red state instead."

    Too be fair, the gem hunters are more likely to succeed in beginning operations there, but the fucking headline sounds like it was written from the gold prospector's / Standard Lithium!? perspective.

    • I didn't read the article, but the summary says it's "$1.5 billion" in lithium, which is like not even worth mining. At $40/kg, that's only 37,500 metric tons, or barely 7% of a single year's global production at recent levels. So a very small amount in the grand scheme of things, probably not worth the investment or environmental damage.

      • > I didn't read the article

        You should have, because if you did you'd know it's $1.5 billion in lithium ore, which after processing would be about $7 billion worth of lithium carbonate.
        =Smidge=

  • What's the geology? (Score:5, Informative)

    by RockDoctor ( 15477 ) on Sunday July 23, 2023 @05:10PM (#63709752) Journal
    That was my first question. Unsurprising, if you look at the username.

    Geological sources of lithium come in two types - spodumene as a component of granites, and in evaporite brines. If you're talking about mining the granite, you might get a couple of percent yield (and be glad for that) for the tonnage of material you have to dig up, sort, and move. (The actual mineral is about 3.6% Li by mass, but you're going to have to carve away tonnes of non-profitable "gangue" along with the (literal - this iw where the phrase comes from) "pay dirt". The best mine in the world has a 2.4% run-of mine percentage. The other source is lithium rich brines pre-concentrated in evaporite deposits - crystallised-out seawater, or in the case of the Atacama, rainfall evaporated in a desert. I can't find any figures for the typical concentration of lithium in such salts.

    The first stage in isolating lithium from a spodumene resource will typically be roasting the ore (at about 3% w/w Li) to a bright red heat, then extracting it with acid. That's going to produce a lot of nasty waste, whichever way you cut it. The resultant liquor will be a bit "dirtier" than what you'd get out of your "lithium brine", and processing would continue fairly similarly.

    This being in America, I don't believe that the 97% by mass production of finely-crushed acid-soaked rock dust would be easy to get past even the emasculated EPA of today, so it was a safe bet that they'd be looking to process brines. It seems that these brines are in sub-surface salt deposits - which are a common play for hydrocarbon discoveries too. I'd be astonished if Exxon didn't have significant prior art in oil exploration in this area. Possibly over a century of prior art. Hell, in my home country, I could draw a map of prospective areas for this sort of mining on the back of a beer mat, then head off to the Geological Survey to pull the appropriate public records without any expenditure. Exxon's library access and deals with other oil companies in the area will give them pretty good figures to have made that 0.1G$ investment on.

    • This particular location would be brine. Specifically, there are existing oil and gas wells in the region that have been expended, and there are currently activities pumping brine from these wells to extract bromine. Under consideration here is to also extract the lithium from that brine, now that market prices make it economical to do so.

      The process they use for the bromine extraction returns the brine into the (existing) wells so they aren't relying on evaporation pools either.
      =Smidge=

      • Yeah, as an oilfield geologist, I was interested in the "extraction from primary rock" option. Brine treatment form a salt dome ... Yawn. Drilled a dozen, drilled around the margins of more. Yawn. Boring geology. My colleagues who got their PhDs in granite geochemistry and post-intrusion mineralisation would be doubly bored.
  • I grew up in Kopperston, West Virginia USA a "Model Coal Camp". It was named after the Koppers Coal Company which built the town. When we first moved there, the coal company would only pay the miners in company script. You could only redeem the script in company stores. You could imagine the prices there. When the mine workers unions gained a pay raise, the prices in the store would rise. My parents were teachers. They were paid in dollars not script. We would wake up some mornings and sweep coal dust of

  • Please stop posting when you don't know anything. (Score:5, Informative)

    by ByTor-2112 ( 313205 ) on Sunday July 23, 2023 @07:44PM (#63710008)

    I am seeing many, many completely misinformed comments.

    This area, Magnolia, Arkansas, has been producing bromine from these natural brines for many decades, and is currently one of the largest bromine producers in the world. The brine also happens to be sort of lithium-rich, but until recently no one wanted the lithium bad enough to try and recover it, so it was just part of the byproduct wastes. Recovery has been tried before and no one could do it and be profitable.

    Read some of it here. [arkansas.gov]

  • Everyone always talks about China, but opening a new mine in the US will not do anything to decrease their hold on the lithium supply.

    This is because less than 15% of the world's lithium supply comes from China. What China has is all of the refining and processing infrastructure. 60% of all lithium is refined there.

    New mines are great and necessary, but if you want to stick it to China, build refineries. You can import lithium ores or salts from Australia (the #1 producer of lithium - about 47%) or Chile (#

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