Lithium (Li) is a very special element. Some of the lithium we rely on in the rechargeable batteries in our smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles was created during the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
The lithium cycle on Earth starts with lithium-bearing magma rising to the Earth’s crust during periods of volcanic activity, where it cools and crystallises into rocks such as granites or pegmatites. Over many thousands of years, weathering of the exposed rocks weakens their structure and allows the lithium salts to be washed out and flow into rivers. Most of the dissolved lithium is carried to the oceans. However in some high mountainous regions, such as the South American Andes, the rivers don’t reach the ocean but instead end in closed basins where the water evaporates, leaving behind lithium-enriched brine contained in salt flats or salars.
Other sources of lithium include oilfield brines, geothermal brines and clays. Lithium is not scarce but as it is highly reactive it is never found in its pure form in nature. Lithium is the 33rd most abundant element in the Earth’s crust with an estimated 98 million tonnes.
Humanity has been interacting with lithium for just over two centuries. In the 1790s, the Brazilian scientist, poet and statesman José Bonefácio de Andrada e Silva discovered two new minerals on the Swedish island of Utö and named them petalite and spodumene. In 1817, the Swedish scientist Johan August Arfwedson, who worked in the lab of the chemist and professor of medicine and pharmacy, Baron Jöns Jacob Berzelius, solved the mystery of these minerals. He isolated a sulphate that did not contain any of the known alkali or alkaline earth metals. Arfwedson named the new element lithium from the Greek word lithos for stone given its grey, stone-like appearance.
Lithium has many remarkable qualities. It is the lightest and least dense solid element in the periodic table with a standard atomic weight of 6.94. Lithium metal is highly reactive and ignites on contact with water as chemistry students may know from the lab, which is why it is only found as a mineral or salt in nature. In its metallic form lithium is a soft silvery-grey metal with good heat and electric conductivity enabling it to store and transmit energy. Lithium is soft enough to cut with a knife and has one of the lowest melting points (180.5 °C) and boiling points (1,347°C) for a metal. Lithium has high electrode potential. Due to its low atomic mass, it has a high charge and power-to-weight ratio, making it well suited to rechargeable batteries.
Applications
One of the first uses of lithium was medicinal. It was proposed as a treatment for gout by Sir Alfred Baring Garrod in 1859, and while it did not relieve gout, it was found to calm manic gout patients.
The soft drink 7-Up started life as Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda when it was launched in 1929 just two weeks before the US stock market crashed. The drink’s creator Charles Leiper Grigg claimed the soda, which contained lithium citrate, had the power to improve the mood of the imbiber. When the United States Food and Drug Administration banned the use of lithium citrate in beverages in 1948 the recipe was changed, and lithium was removed from 7-Up.
The dip in demand didn’t last long, however, because one year later the Australian psychiatrist John Cade established that lithium could treat mania and ever since lithium carbonate has become a standard treatment for bipolar and depressive disorders, offering help to a great number of people around the world.
Lithium grease was invented around 1940 and was found to be superior to existing sodium and calcium-based greases. It found widespread industrial use in aircraft engines during the 1940s and is still widely used today. Later industrial applications include the use of lithium as an additive in aluminium smelting and in the manufacture of high-strength glass-ceramic products including the induction cook tops in many kitchens, tough glass, fiberglass, ceramic frits, and even ceramic dentures. Other uses include air conditioning and polymer catalysts.
Demand for lithium increased again following the development of nuclear weapons; when added to the core of a nuclear weapon, the isotope lithium-6 reacts with neutrons to produce tritium (T), in a process which escalates the power of the thermonuclear explosion.The United States was the largest refiner of lithium-6 between the late 1950s and the mid-1980s, but when the Cold War ended the US sold its stockpile of lithium and the price fell.
The battery age
Lithium first entered the modern era when, during the 1970s oil crisis, the English chemist Stanley Whittingham developed a rechargeable battery using lithium and titanium. However, these early batteries could short circuit and didn’t become mainstream. Later, in 1980, John B. Goodenough, an American materials scientist, developed a lithium and cobalt battery which had double the operating voltage and an increased energy density. The third key breakthrough in lithium battery technology came in 1985 when Akira Yoshino, a Japanese chemist, developed carbon-based anodes and a non-aqueous electrolyte, leading to a stable, reliable and high-powered lithium-ion battery (LIB), which Sony then commercialised.
A LIB is a rechargeable battery in which lithium ions move from the negative electrode (anode) to the positive electrode (cathode) during discharge, and back when charging. LIBs have good energy-to-weight ratios, high open circuit voltage, low self-discharge rate, no memory effect and a slow loss of charge when not in use. In addition to consumer electronics, LIBs are used in military and electric vehicle and aerospace applications due to their high energy density.
In 2019, Professors John B. Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work developing LIBs. Their breakthrough changed our lives enabling us to power the now ubiquitous smartphone and other portable devices. As the world moves toward net zero around 85% of lithium extracted today is used in LIBs, including to power electric vehicles and renewable energy grid storage solutions.
Today most lithium is extracted from spodumene (hard rock) in Australia and from brines in Chile and Argentina. The majority of Australian spodumene is currently processed into chemicals in China, although new refining capacity is being planned and built in many places, including Europe, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Australia. The mid-stream supply chain encompassing lithium chemicals and battery cathode materials is currently concentrated in Japan, China and South Korea.
Wood Mackenzie estimates that the growth in electric vehicles (EVs) could see lithium demand increase by five times by 2040. The global LIB market is estimated to reach a value of US$75 billion by 2027. Lithium’s role in the decarbonisation of the global economy is so important that several countries have classified it as a critical or strategic raw material. Governments around the world are stimulating the development of proprietary lithium resources and supply chains by offering subsidies on domestically produced EVs and other incentives. To meet the forecast demand, many existing producers are scaling up their operations and there is a lot of interest in non-traditional lithium resources such as clays, geothermal brines and alternative lithium minerals such as lepidolite and amblygonite. Similarly, several direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies are being developed.
The great advantage of electric vehicles over traditional petrol and diesel vehicles is that the elements in the battery can be recycled indefinitely. As the electric vehicle industry matures it will increasingly become a circular supply chain, not a linear one like past economic models. Currently battery recycling processes can extract up to 90% of the original lithium and the recovery rate and economics will only improve as more investment and battery scrap becomes available. As more electric vehicles reach the end of their lives in the next decade recycling will play an increasingly important role.
The great advantage of electric vehicles over traditional petrol and diesel vehicles is that the elements in the battery can be recycled indefinitely. As the electric vehicle industry matures it will increasingly become a circular supply chain, not a linear one like past economic models. Currently battery recycling processes can extract up to 90% of the original lithium and the recovery rate and economics will only improve as more investment and battery scrap becomes available. As more electric vehicles reach the end of their lives in the next decade recycling will play an increasingly important role.
We are living through an energy and transport revolution. Lithium is the key enabler of this change and will continue to grow in importance in coming decades.
