The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Metal Tech News - October 23, 2024
USGS estimates that the Smackover Formation below southern Arkansas hosts more than 5 million tons of lithium.
USGS sampled the southwestern Arkansas portion of the much larger Smackover Formation.
ExxonMobil drills its first lithium well in southern Arkansas.
By applying next-generation machine learning to old-fashioned water sampling, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there is enough lithium dissolved in salty waters beneath Arkansas to keep America supplied with this critical battery metal for decades.
Arkansas happens to sit atop a particularly lithium-rich area of the Smackover Formation, the relic of an ancient sea that left an extensive geological unit that extends under parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. This enormous formation of porous limestone from the Jurassic period, roughly 145 million to 201 million years ago, has long been known to host rich stores of lithium-enriched brines.
These saltwater brines, which are currently brought to the surface as a waste byproduct of oil and gas recovery, offer a ready supply of lithium the U.S. needs for its transition to low-carbon energy and transportation.
"Lithium is a critical mineral for the energy transition, and the potential for increased U.S. production to replace imports has implications for employment, manufacturing and supply-chain resilience," said USGS Director David Applegate.
USGS sampled the southwestern Arkansas portion of the much larger Smackover Formation.
To gain a better understanding of how much lithium is dissolved in the brines under Arkansas, samples collected from the Smackover Formation were analyzed at the USGS Brine Research Instrumentation and Experimental lab in Virginia. The data from this analysis was compared with information from historical samples kept in a national waters database, and then a machine learning model was used to combine lithium concentrations in brines with geological data to create maps that predict total lithium concentrations across the region, even in areas lacking lithium samples.
"Our research was able to estimate total lithium present in the southwestern portion of the Smackover in Arkansas for the first time," said Katherine Knierim, a USGS hydrologist and the study's principal researcher.
Based on the results from this study, the USGS estimates that between 5 million and 19 million tons of lithium reserves lie beneath southern Arkansas. This is enough lithium for batteries in 625 million to 2.3 billion average-sized electric vehicles.
Even at the low end of the estimate, there is nine times more lithium in the Arkansas portion of the Smackover Formation than the International Energy Agency forecasts will be needed globally in 2030.
"We estimate there is enough dissolved lithium present in that region to replace U.S. imports of lithium and more," Knierim added. "It is important to caution that these estimates are an in-place assessment. We have not estimated what is technically recoverable based on newer methods to extract lithium from brines."
ExxonMobil drills its first lithium well in southern Arkansas.
Mobil Lithium, a division of oil giant ExxonMobil, Albemarle Corp., the world's largest lithium producing company, and Standard Lithium Ltd., which was recently selected for up to a $225 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for its South West Arkansas lithium project, are all working toward the development and commercialization of direct lithium extraction technology to efficiently and sustainably recover this critical battery metal from southern Arkansas brines.
"We have the technology that can extract lithium with fewer carbon emissions, we can deliver a transparent supply chain, and we can scale projects that can reliably execute," said Patrick Howarth, lithium global business manager at ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions.
Now, thanks to water samples, machine learning, and a partnership with the Office of the Arkansas State Geologist, the USGS analysis puts a more definite figure on how much lithium is available to be directly extracted from the remnants of an ancient sea below southern Arkansas.
With more than 16 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration and technology metals.
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