German team of scientist develops process that allows for extraction of lithium from salt water

Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have developed an environmentally friendly process for extracting lithium from the saline thermal water reservoirs in the Upper Rhine Graben. Similar to other initiatives in Great Britain, the German scientists want to extract the white metal using minimally invasive methods. The mechanism they devised is to filter lithium ions out of the thermal water and then concentrate them further until lithium can be precipitated as a salt.  "As far as we know, this can be up to 200 milligrams per liter," says Jens Grimmer, geoscientist at KIT, who developed the method together with his colleague Florencia Saravia. "If we consistently use this potential, we could cover a considerable part of the demand in Germany. Compared to traditional methods of extracting lithium from the South American salt pans and Australian hard rock, according to Grimmer, the KIT process does not require any external water feed, since the existing infrastructure of geothermal systems, through which up to two billion liters of thermal water flow annually, can be used. At the same time, the new process hardly generates any spoil, the use of space is minimal, and since the thermal water is returned to the subsoil after use, no pollutants are released and geothermal electricity and heat production is not impaired. In terms of efficiency, the researcher said that the mechanism he proposed enables lithium to be continuously extracted within hours in the thermal water circuit of the geothermal system, which is very different from the approach used in the lithium triangle deposits, where the enrichment process takes several months and is highly weather-dependent is. Since the process can use the technical and energetic infrastructure of a geothermal plant, the CO2 balance is also noticeable compared to traditional mining. "We export many environmental problems to third countries in order to maintain and improve our standard of living. With this process we can live up to our responsibilities and obtain important raw materials for modern technologies in an environmentally friendly manner right on our doorstep," said Florencia Saravia in the briefing. "At the same time, we can build regional value chains, create jobs and reduce geopolitical dependencies. Germany is currently a net importer of lithium from Chile, Argentina and Australia as many companies use it to produce battery cells for electric vehicles. This means that the metal is of great importance for the federal government's climate protection program.