How is Lithium made?

Explore lithium's uses in ceramics, glasses, pharmaceutics, lubricants, alloys, and batteries, and outline production from brines and ores to carbonate and chloride derivatives.

Explore the lithium supply chain from deposits and brines to mineral concentrates and derived salts, including carbonate, hydroxide, chlorides, and organolithiums used in batteries, lubricants, steel, and advanced industries.

Explore fundamental geologic terminology, including minerals, rocks, ore deposits, and gangue, and learn how minerals form rocks and yield economically valuable ore.

Explore lithium deposits, resources, and reserves across Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, the United States, Australia, and China, and how brine and hard-rock mining shape production.

Explore filtration as a solid-liquid separation step in lithium production, using filtration paper to separate slurry, with liquid passing through and solids remaining, plus various filtration devices.

Learn how precipitation converts dissolved compounds into solids to remove impurities, such as iron, from solutions by changing solubility with bases like sodium hydroxide, carbonates, or sulfides.

Learn how solvent extraction uses an organic solvent to separate target molecules from an aqueous solution, creating a dispersed organic phase, settling, and recovery through washing, stripping, and reuse.

Explore crushing and screening workflows in lithium ore processing that reduce ore size with cone crushing, ball milling, and cyclones, and manage fine dust and 0.03 mm targets.

Process concentrated spodumene through mineral conversion to carbonate or hydroxide, highlighting acid hosting, slime hosting, and an exchange.

Describe acid-roasting leaching in lithium production, where salt water in steel tanks dissolves sulfates while silicate impurities remain undissolved through several tanks until everything is dissolved.

Filter the sulfate solution to remove alumina silicate and impurities, then add sodium carbonate to precipitate alkaline metals and iron, with purification by sulfuric acid, active charcoal, or ion exchange.

Follow a lime roasting flowsheet to convert calcium carbonate to lithium hydroxide, through leaching, concentration, mixing and settling, purification, evaporation, and crystallization into lithium hydroxide crystals.

This lecture outlines lithium metal production, compares it to sodium production, and explains producing lithium from chlorides, including the down process and how potassium chloride lowers the melting point.