Since ancient times, human has been dependent on the mineral resources of the earth, and most of the time they have been mined without restraint. There are so many deposits of critical minerals around the world, which makes the Earth look like a mineral earth, and lithium is one of them. According to the IPCC (2007), current energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from fossil fuel combustion account for around 70% of total emissions. To continue to extract and combust oil, coal, peat, and natural gas at current or increasing rates, and so release carbon into the atmosphere is, as the IEA stated, environmentally, economically and socially unsustainable. In the actual context of climate change threats, lithium batteries fulfil lot of expectations in order to achieve a cleaner and more sustainable solution for transports, embodied by electric vehicles. It's only been within the last 115 years that humans have begun mining Earth's lithium resources, and right now production is booming.

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Lithium has historically been produced from two sources: brines and hard rock mining. Producing lithium from brines remains the most efficient and cost effective process. The cost-effectiveness of brine operations forced even large producers in China and Russia to develop their own brine sources or buy raw materials from brine producers.

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These brines contain lithium derived mainly from the leaching of volcanic rocks and vary greatly in lithium content, largely as a result of the extent to which they have been subject to solar evaporation. They range from highly concentrated lithium deposits in the high altitude salars of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Tibet and China where lithium concentrations can be very high; to mid-level brines like Silver Peak, Nevada and Searles Lake, California (a former location of lithium production); to lower concentration brines like the Great Salt Lake, Utah. The lower concentration brines have modest evaporation rates and dilution is constant due to a large volume of fresh water inflow and small lithium concentrations varying between 30 to 60 ppm. 

 

The effectiveness of producing lithium carbonate from salt brines is so favorable that most hard rock mining operations have been priced out of the market. Lithium brines are currently the only lithium source that can support mining without significant other credits from tantalum, niobium, tin etc.

 

Once the lithium is recovered by-products include salable compounds such as potash or boron and the chemicals used can be recycled. Lithium recovery from brines may lead to a significant carbon footprint reduction because of a nearly zero-waste mining method.

 

It may seem like lithium-brine extraction is a environmental process but that is not entirely true. During the process, lots of environmental changes are brought to the local communities suffering especially from the water issues.