MIT Researchers Develop a Low-Cost Technique To Get Lithium Out of Rocks

Source: Slashdot

Background

Currently, lithium hard‑rock extraction involves baking the rock at over 1,000 °C and chemically leaching it to extract lithium, with the remainder of the rock discarded. A team of researchers from MIT and other institutions has developed a low‑temperature process for extracting battery‑grade lithium from the most common lithium‑bearing mineral.

New Low‑Temperature Process

The new process uses a liquid reagent to dissolve the rock into useful constituent parts:

• Battery‑ready lithium salts
• Smelter‑grade alumina
• Cement‑ready silica

After extraction, the solvent and reagent can be recovered and reused, driving waste levels toward zero. The researchers estimate that this closed‑loop process costs roughly half as much as traditional lithium hard‑rock extraction and could become cost‑competitive with lithium extraction from brine water.

Expert Comment

“We believe this approach is the lowest‑energy, lowest‑cost way of getting lithium not only out of hard rock, but period,” says Yet‑Ming Chiang, MIT’s Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. “That’s what’s motivating us to scale this. It will enable the energy transition through batteries that use lithium. This was one of the goals of The Climate Project at MIT—to work on projects that, within a short number of years, could transition from the lab to commercialization and impact.”

Publication

The process is described in a paper published in the journal Science.