Sept. 3, 2024
Lithium is an essential resource in our everyday lives. It’s an abundant element with a wide range of uses in the pharmaceutical, manufacturing and energy storage industries.
At Albemarle, we have more than 100 years of experience in pioneering the responsible use of lithium, most recently for use in lithium-ion batteries. Learn more about what lithium is and how it’s used.
What is Lithium?
When it comes to lithium, many people think of lithium-ion batteries. But batteries are a relatively recent application. The story begins with the discovery of spodumene in the late 18th century.
In the 1790s, a Brazilian scientist named José Bonefácio de Andrada e Silva was working in Sweden when he discovered two new minerals, which he named petalite and spodumene. It took more than two decades for another scientist, Johan August Arfwedson of Sweden, to understand more about the minerals. His analysis of petalite ore showed the presence of a new element, which he named lithium. Arfwedson went on to show that the element was also present in spodumene and lepidolite.
The work of isolating the element fell to British scientist William Thomas Brande, who in 1821 successfully used electrolysis to extract pure lithium from lithium oxide, a lithium compound. Brande later identified pure salts of lithium and calculated its atomic weight (6.94).
Elemental Lithium (Li) is an alkali metal with an atomic number of 3 for its three protons, three electrons and four neutrons. It’s the least dense of all solid elements and the lightest of all metals, and it has a lower density than water. It’s highly reactive and oxidizes when it comes into contact with air.
Why Do We Need Lithium?
Lithium was first used for medicinal purposes. In 1848, Sir Alfred Baring Garrod, a British physician, discovered that high levels of uric acid caused gout. He proposed the use of lithium to treat the condition. It didn’t work, but he noticed that manic gout patients saw an improvement in their mental health after taking lithium and hypothesized it could be an effective mental health treatment.
Lithium was included in the soft drink 7-Up’s original 1929 formula thanks to its mood-enhancing properties. It was later banned by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in beverages, and the recipe was changed. But in 1949, Australian psychiatrist John Cade reintroduced the idea to the medical community, and studies showed that Garrod’s original hypothesis was accurate. Lithium is still used today to treat certain mental disorders.
Meanwhile, commercial production of lithium began 1923, when the German company Metallgesellschaft AG — one of Albemarle’s corporate ancestors — perfected the technique of using electrolysis on a liquid mixture of lithium chloride and potassium chloride. The element was added to metal used to produce train bearings.
During World War II, lithium showed up in high-temperature greases and industrial soaps. During the Cold War, it proved useful for the production of nuclear fusion weapons. As a result, the US became the prime producer of lithium between the late 1950s and the mid-1980s.
Over the past 50 years, many industries have utilized lithium, thanks to its unique properties. It enhances materials such as glass, aluminum, cement, rubber, ceramics, flavors and fragrances. It’s useful in wind turbines, HVAC systems and airplanes. And it has become increasingly known for its use in energy storage. Lithium is an essential part of our everyday lives.
Research into lithium as a key element for energy storage has been ongoing since the 1970s. Its unique characteristics enable higher energy density (the amount of energy stored per unit volume or mass) and specific power (the ability to provide a power burst) than competing battery technologies. The material also creates a safe battery that is fast to charge and slow to lose charge when not in use.
As a result of these characteristics and ongoing research and development, lithium-ion batteries have become ubiquitous. They power today’s smartphones, smart watches and other portable electronic devices, including those used for healthcare applications. They also power electric vehicles and renewable energy grid storage solutions.
The Albemarle Difference
As a global leader in lithium production, Albemarle is committed to safely and responsibly extracting and processing lithium. We’re also pioneering new ways to use it.
Lithium is found in trace amounts in various mediums around the globe, but the main sources of lithium for commercial extraction include hardrock pegmatites (e.g. petalite and spodumene) and continental brines (e.g. saltwater aquifers). Our business includes both sources.
Hardrock Mining Operations
Ore extracted from hardrock mining sites is mechanically crushed to reduce its size, then further milled to produce a finer product suitable for separation in floating cells. The resulting spodumene concentrate can be sold for direct application in the manufacture of glass and ceramics or chemically processed to create lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide.
Our joint venture-owned spodumene mine in Greenbushes, Western Australia, is the largest active lithium mine in the world. Our access to Greenbushes is through our 49% share in Talison Lithium, located in Australia.
We also have mineral rights at our Kings Mountain, North Carolina, site, which is one of the largest known spodumene resources in North America and is home to our lithium research and development facility.
Brine Operations
Brine containing high concentrations of lithium is pulled from saltwater aquifers using extraction wells. From there, the brine is diverted to a system of evaporation ponds, which concentrate the brine’s lithium salts with solar power until it can be converted to lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide or lithium chloride. These compounds are further processed into our commercial lithium products.
Our lithium-producing brine sites are in Salar de Atacama, Chile, which is part of the world’s richest commercial brine deposit, and Silver Peak, Nevada, which is the only active lithium-producing site in North America.
Lithium Processing
Extraction is only the beginning. We refine lithium to offer solutions that play a crucial role in enhancing everyday products. We offer solutions that improve key characteristics of products in the automotive, aviation, energy storage and glass and ceramics industries, just to name a few.
Less than an hour’s drive from Charlotte, North Carolina, lies Kings Mountain, a city that straddles a mineral-rich area that has played host to miners and prospectors since gold was discovered there in the 1800s.
Albemarle's Kings Mountain site boasts one of the world’s richest lithium-bearing-ore deposits. But that ore, which in the case of Kings Mountain is predominantly a mineral known as spodumene, has a low concentration of lithium.
Albemarle's Eric Norris speaks with Andrea Hotter of Fastmarkets about the need to produce lithium-ion batteries, which are crucial to electric vehicles and energy storage systems.
