The Minerals Manhattan Podcast
Is Lithium Brine Water? Anti-Webinar Highlights
A week ago, Alex Grant, Emily Hersh, Carlos Daniel Galli, Daniel Jimenez Schuster, Murray Brooker and chatted for two hours on the question, "Is lithium brine water?"
We discussed
- hydrogeology
- environmental impacts
- whose responsibility it is to ensure that a lithium brine project does not impact water availability for humans, animals, and other things which we value.
The consensus was that the lithium industry has done a poor job at communicating its water impacts. Also, that decades of hydrogeological data from operating projects should be leveraged to ensure that expansions and new projects don't create unacceptable environmental impacts. Scientific data is key for making these decisions and we need more of it.
We believe lithium brine operators should act more like a collaborative industry even if they are competitors. Together, these challenges may be addressable, and the water "question" hanging over brine operations could go away. If that doesn't happen, it could prevent South American brines from capturing much of the growth in the lithium market, which they have already failed to do in the 2010s. This wouldn't be a good outcome, since brines are a low CO2 emission source of #lithium chemicals.
If you'd like to read the summary, you can find it here:
https://www.jadecove.com/research/islithiumbrinewaterantiwebinar
A week ago, Alex Grant, Emily Hersh, Carlos Daniel Galli, Daniel Jimenez Schuster, Murray Brooker and chatted for two hours on the question, "Is lithium brine water?"
We discussed
- hydrogeology
- environmental impacts
- whose responsibility it is to ensure that a lithium brine project does not impact water availability for humans, animals, and other things which we value.
The consensus was that the lithium industry has done a poor job at communicating its water impacts. Also, that decades of hydrogeological data from operating projects should be leveraged to ensure that expansions and new projects don't create unacceptable environmental impacts. Scientific data is key for making these decisions and we need more of it.
We believe lithium brine operators should act more like a collaborative industry even if they are competitors. Together, these challenges may be addressable, and the water "question" hanging over brine operations could go away. If that doesn't happen, it could prevent South American brines from capturing much of the growth in the lithium market, which they have already failed to do in the 2010s. This wouldn't be a good outcome, since brines are a low CO2 emission source of #lithium chemicals.
If you'd like to read the summary, you can find it here:
https://www.jadecove.com/research/islithiumbrinewaterantiwebinar