Mackey’s research, recently published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, says that briny water deep within the Marcellus Shale — which comes to the surface during gas production — could supply 38 to 40% of current domestic demand for lithium, which is estimated at 3000 tons. Metric tons annually. But this demand is expected to jump to 340,000 metric tons by 2032.
Lithium is now considered one of the most important components of energy transmission. Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are light and able to store a lot of energy. They power electric cars, computers, iPhones, and large battery storage facilities.
“So, we’re going to need a lot of lithium if we want to decarbonize all of this stuff,” Mackey said.
The bipartisan infrastructure law would require electric vehicle batteries to use domestically sourced raw materials by 2030. The law was intended to reduce reliance on Chinese lithium sources and would likely increase domestic demand. The Biden administration also recently imposed steep tariffs on electric batteries and vehicles coming from China.
More than half the global supply of lithium is extracted from subsurface brine deposits in Chile and Argentina’s Atacama Desert, then shipped to China to be processed into lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide, which is then used to make lithium-ion batteries.
The analysis conducted shows that the Marcellus Shale could be a significant source of lithium, said David Bott, a hydrogeologist and professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was not involved in the study.
“These are very high concentrations of lithium. Some of them are approaching the lithium concentrations we see in (South America),” said Bott, who researches lithium systems in the United States, Canada and South America. “In South America, there are concerns about extracting too much,” he said. of water in arid regions.
“So having a source of lithium in what is essentially a waste product is a really important step,” he said. “I think the way we get (adequate supplies) is to have multiple sources of lithium that have low carbon and low water footprints.”
But extracting lithium from wastewater is not easy, and will require a large amount of energy, Bott said.
Although the United States has very little domestic supply at the moment, it has the world’s first lithium mine in Nevada. The Silver Peak mine extracts lithium using hard rock mining, which consumes a lot of energy and water. The Department of Energy just approved a $2.26 billion loan to help start up another lithium mine in Thacker Pass, Nevada.
A new domestic source of brine lithium is the Smackover Formation in Arkansas, operated by Standard Lithium. ExxonMobil has invested heavily in lithium production in this formation.
But questions remain about the economic viability of extracting lithium from Marcellus wastewater.
One company working in the Marcellus Shale has already begun developing a process to extract lithium from wastewater. Eureka Resources reported back in July that it had “extracted 97% pure lithium carbonate from oil and natural gas brine from production activities with a recovery rate of up to 90%.”
The company is headquartered in Williamsport and operates two wastewater treatment facilities in Pennsylvania. It says it uses a closed-loop system that combines “physical and chemical processing, concentration and crystallization,” similar to the process it uses to extract and sell salts, such as sodium chloride and calcium chloride. It said in the press release that it expects to sell lithium within two years.
But Bott said it was unlikely that oil and gas companies would rush to sell lithium. “There is a lot of work being done in manufacturing the lithium used in batteries,” he said.
Once the lithium is extracted, there is still the problem of disposing of the remaining wastewater that still contains toxic materials, whether it is used to fracking another well or if it is shipped to a deep injection well for disposal.
