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This type of procedure is known as direct lithium mining, or DLE, and Kachi is one of the most complex projects in the world to use it. However, the generation has not shown itself. Even with major lithium manufacturers exploring DLE, adding the world’s largest producer, Albemarle Corp. In North Carolina, experts say he struggled to move from the lab to the field. Some teams of investors have expressed serious doubts about Lake Resources’ ability to operate on a giant scale in line with its ambitious program. The company also faced internal upheavals: in June, Promnitz announced his resignation. He told TIME that adjustments to the company’s control were “planned” before the structure began in Kachi, and Lake President Stu Crow said the departure “was for purely non-public reasons. “Despite the turmoil, Kachi remains a very important control for DLE.
The economic incentives to implement generation may not be clearer. Right now, you can’t force electric cars or buy renewable energy without lithium. Over the past 12 months, analysts say the price crisis could be eased by a glut of new lithium investments. Proponents argue that the faster and more effective DLE process is critical to increasing lithium production and avoiding disastrous force bottlenecks. transition, slowing down the fight against climate change. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called it a “game changer” for the battery industry. David Snydacker, CEO of lilac, says you have to be successful: “Mainstream players haven’t been able to get a new source and the volumes needed for electric cars,” he says. “So until 2030, either there’s a disaster in the electric vehicle market or the lithium industry is completely transformed. “
The stakes are also high for environmental justice. Climate advocates have long been concerned that obtaining the so-called green minerals essential for decarbonization (lithium, cobalt, copper, etc. ) requires mining processes that destroy ecosystems. and harm communities. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, unsafe operating situations in cobalt mines have led human rights activists to nickname the resource “blood cobalt”. It works, it could help argentina’s lithium industry avoid those nicknames. “If we want to make an energy transition, we can’t just repeat the sins of the past,” Promnitz says. “We want to do better. “
Bolivia’s leftist government, which controls the world’s largest lithium deposits but fears that the social and environmental effects of exploiting them will have a social and environmental effect, turns out to see the DLE as the solution. In June, after a pilot program looking for lithium recovery rates. and water use, officials announced that six DLE companies, in addition to Lilac, could compete for lithium contracts.
But amid the lithium fever, Argentine environmentalists say a fairer long term is far from guaranteed. Most mining corporations are not waiting for the deployment of cleaner technologies. And projects like Kachi, which promise “cleaner lithium,” have yet to prove can work without undermining freshwater resources or changing a poorly understood ecosystem. Uncertainty hangs over the Vasquez brothers, who have lived in this land for 3 generations and hope to one day pass it on to their own children. I come to you and tell you, ‘Don’t worry, nothing is going to happen,'” says Florentín. “But the ones who are in danger are us. “
To spot a lithium mine in South America, look for evaporation tanks – gigantic pools of blue-green brine. These oblong pools cover tens of square kilometers in Chile’s Atacama Desert, releasing tens of millions of metric tons of water into the air annually, or at least 383. 5 metric tons consistent with the metric ton of lithium carbonate produced, according to estimates by Argentine researchers. At Catmarca, pools are lately a rare spectacle, for now: Argentina, which has been battling an economic mess that has spooked investors for decades. , has been slow to expand its lithium industry. But at least 14 projects are being explored or in structure lately in this province alone.
Kachi is another one of those classic mines. Early on a beautiful March morning, the contrasting colors of almost itchy your eyes: a white salt lake, resembling a half-melted snowfall, stands at the foot of a black volcano, all framed by pink and orange mountains and blue skies. A giant red drill drills holes in the lake’s salty crust to extract brine samples from below.
When the structure is completed in two years, there will be more extraction wells and covered tanks for the ion exchange procedure critical to DLE efficiency. “We’re going to put the brine in those tanks for just 3 hours,” Promnitz says, squinting at the sun’s glasses. Inside, lithium atoms will break off from water molecules and bond instead with tiny ion exchange beads produced through Lilac Solutions. The beads are then extracted from the brine and washed with a strong acid to separate the lithium chloride. Meanwhile, the brine— about 800 metric tons consistent with the metric ton of lithium carbonate produced— can be returned to the aquifer, Promnitz says. In theory, this should prevent groundwater depletion, Chilean communities reported. Some of the new water, however, is then used in the procedure of converting lithium chloride into lithium carbonate, to be sent to corporations that manufacture battery cathodes.
Kachi is the most complex task for Lilac Solutions, whose investors come from BMW, as well as Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investment fund fund funded by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. somewhere “in the western United States. “that produced 25 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent in a year, which is enough to make batteries of around 400 Tesla, according to estimates made in 2015 through Goldman Sachs analysts. A larger pilot will be installed this year in Kachi, ahead of the start of commercial-scale production in 2024, giving Lilac the opportunity to present itself on the world market. In a vote of confidence in April, Ford Motor Co. signed a non-binding agreement with Lake Resources to acquire 25,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate per year from Kachi. The Japanese company Hanwa signed a similar memorandum for the other half.
It’s probably just a satisfied coincidence that the most effective, and therefore cost-effective, lithium extraction strategies also have a smaller land and water footprint than classical approaches. in talks to provide 70% of the financing for the construction of Kachi. Snydacker says Lilac’s more sustainable generation “can help allocation developers avoid the backlash” that some now see in local communities to lithium allocations. Chilean mining corporations have faced costly demanding legal situations over their brine use. In Argentina, anti-mine protests are common in the cities of Catamarca and the neighboring provinces of Jujuy and Salta, generating national headlines about threats to local water supplies.
Argentine environmentalists are intrigued, but not reassured, by Lake and Lilac’s claims to decrease water consumption. “They promise us that it will have less effect,” says Patricia Marconi, a researcher at the YUCHAN Foundation in Catamarca, a conservation group. “But they didn’t publish anything. ” She says Lake refused to share information with her and her colleagues. The company has not yet published its environmental impact in the assessment report, leading to uncertainty. (Lake Resources President Stu Crowe told TIME that the report is still being compiled and is expected to be released in the third quarter of 2022. )
Marconi’s considerations relate to two questions: first, how will the reinjection of large amounts of brine affect the geological formations of the aquifer below the surface?it is a “very harmful oversimplification” of the potential environmental impact of the process. According to the article, treating brines to remove lithium can also simply replace their acidity and introduce lines of foreign substances. And corporations would likely have to inject used brines elsewhere besides where they disposed of it, necessarily to avoid diluting the lithium content where they extract.
The timing is, how much new water will be fed in the later stages of the process?Marconi warns that this water will likely be the so-called fossil water, extracted from aquifers confined underground for thousands of years that do not feed quickly. enough through today’s rain to replenish.
All of this, Marconi says, will have an unknown effect on the little-studied geology and sensitive ecosystem of salt lakes. In his enthusiasm for lithium, he says Argentina’s national and provincial governments are not doing the necessary studies to anticipate having a major mining expansion effect, making the country a “free for all” for the lithium industry. If we really took seriously the concept of not intervening in environmental systems that we don’t understand, I wouldn’t have explored in Catamarca. There would be 20 study groups exploring what’s going to happen,” he says. “Because the damage is irreversible. “
Catamarca has an explanation for why to doubt DLE’s environmental promise. Three hours north of Kachi, a tooth-biting path on rocky mountain roads, the yellows and vegetables of the Puna’s summer plants are suddenly interrupted through an expanse of black earth. This is the valley of the Trapiche River, a source of water for the huge salt lake Dead Man. In 1997, Livent, a Philadelphia-based lithium mining company, a key supplier to Tesla and BMW, built a small dam on the spot where the river empties into the salt lake. The dam concentrates the new water for use at the Livent mine, which can now produce up to 20,000 metric tons of lithium each year. During TIME’s stopover in March, the last month of the Puna’s rainy season, a thread of water a few meters wide flowed in front of the dam, through a parched and blackened meadow.
The allocation is the oldest lithium mine in Argentina, and is also the only one in the Western Hemisphere to use some form of DLE on a giant scale. Their procedure is hybrid: Lithium brines are allowed to evaporate in pools but for “much less time,” according to Livent, than in classical methods, reducing saltwater loss. The brine then goes through a DLE procedure and then, Livent says, “most” of the salt water is returned to the “surrounding salt habitat. “”Then the new water from the Trapiche River is used to separate the lithium. The company did not disclose figures on brine use, but says it has “not contributed to reducing brine or water [during the two decades of operation] in the Salar. “
Román Guitián blames Livent for the destruction of the valley. Guitián grew up near the river, in a small indigenous arrangement formed by his circle of relatives and a few others. Before mining started, when I was 17 years old, they were going to look for salt from Dead Man. and raise llamas, goats and sheep on the plants of the valley, says Guitián, stated through the salt lake next to a 4×. 4 beaten that he uses to take tourists to the mountains. “It’s beautiful. But today there are no animals because everything is dry.
Signs scattered across the river announce a program to repair the valley through reforestation and new irrigation systems, which Livent introduced last year with a regional NGO, the Eco-Awareness Foundation. Argentine officials and Tesla executives, Livent showed plans to double the plant’s lithium production capacity by the end of 2023. The company is also planning two more expansions, with the goal of bringing its total capacity to 100,000 metric tons by 2030. In investor filings, Livent says it will incorporate “reuse” and “recycling” to restrict its use of new water in the future. But he also says the latest level of expansion will involve “a more traditional procedure on pond evaporation. “
During Time’s visit, staff were busy digging a pipe connecting the Hombre Muerto plant to the Los Patos River, about 16 km away. “They destroyed a river and now they’re going to destroy Array,” guitián says. an indigenous network, Atacameños of the altiplano, made up of a few dozen other local inhabitants. The designation would give the network a constitutional right to participate in the control of herbarium resources in its territory. I would use it to protect the environment from “irresponsible mining,” he says. “If the day comes when we run out of water, we will have to migrate. “
The governor of Catamarca, Raul Jalil, said that the province learned of the effects on the Trapiche River. “There are things that possibly would have gone wrong in the past, but we’re working them out,” he says. “Now we’re exercising more. ” Companies are now required to conduct monthly environmental monitoring, and if disorders arise, projects will be halted, Jalil says. water chemistry to help us use water sustainably. “
Jalil, however, says he does not plan to limit the number of lithium projects approved in the province, nor does he plan to ban classic water-intensive strategies in new mines, unlike the Bolivian government. “All projects, from agriculture to tourism, have their effect on the environment, and we cannot replace the entire global energy formula without mining,” he says. “The way forward is to reduce the effect more and more, through technology, innovation, at the same time as [continuous] extraction. “He needs Kachi to be “a case of leader” there.
Promnitz says Kachi will use water more successfully than Livent: Livent’s global freshwater use by 2020, based primarily on the Dead Man project, its only active lithium carbonate mine, 72. 9 metric tons consistent with the metric ton of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) produced. The lab, Lilac says it used 18 metric tons of water consistent with the metric ton of LCE. Lake says the rate in Kachi will be particularly lower than that and that additional water savings will come from brackish and recycled water use plans.
Promnitz, who began his career as a geologist for mining companies, also says the brine reinjection procedure is not as risky as environmentalists fear. The procedure is similar to the one that has been used for decades for oil recovery in the U. S. shale sector. he says, unless the looser sediments of salt lakes, compared to the more compact formations beneath the Texas and Louisiana oil fields, deserve to be less vital where brine is reinjected. “It’s not as if [the brine] lives in a specific formation. Simply remove the lithium and put back precisely the same brine that was there before.
In the conversation, Jalil and other local Catamarca officials seem far more involved in mining’s economic prospects than in its environmental risks. Northwestern Argentina has been a backwater, receiving little investment from Buenos Aires or abroad. Politicians see mining as a possibility to replace this. : companies, including Livent, have paid for roads and bridges on roads that until recently were impassable in bad weather; Lake is in talks to rent local staff and hire services, such as los angelesundries, with local businesses. Although wary of damaged promises, the mayors of El Peñón and Antofagasta de los Angeles Sierra, the two towns closest to Kachi, affirm versions of the same phrase: “If the corporate grows, the people also deserve it. “
It’s understandable that local leaders are taking this approach, says Juan Carrizo, director of the Eco-Conciencia Foundation, which aims to “resolve socio-environmental conflicts” around mining. “It’s easy to protect the environment of places like Buenos Aires, where you can have internet, roads, fuel and transportation,” he says. “But here, the progression of the network is also on the table. “
A debate about mining is taking place in the streets of Antofagasta in the Sierra de los Angeles. The stickers proudly display angelesyed on the bumpers proclos angelesim “I am a wonderful friend of mining”, while the graffiti urges “do not touch our land and water”. “Florentin, whose estate is close to Kachi’s, is in conflict. He says that if environmental disorders arose from the project, he wouldn’t know what to do. “However, I don’t think we want to do that,” he says slowly. “There are a lot of other people here who want to work, and they come and tell me. So I feel a little stuck.
We are entering a global mining boom. Carbon reduction technologies, such as wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars, require a larger volume and a more varied set of minerals than their dirty counterparts. Already, since 2010, according to the International Energy Agency, “the average amount of minerals for a new unit of electric power generation capacity is higher by 50% as the percentage of renewable energy is higher. This gives the global mining industry the possibility to replace its name: from environmental villain to savior of the climate.
But in an era of increased environmental awareness, communities are also opposed to mining allocations. In January, after weeks of mass protests, the government of Serbia, believed to be home to Europe’s largest lithium deposits, suspended a $2. 4 billion allocation led by mining giant Rio Tinto. , which may have provided only 90% of Europe’s existing lithium needs. Although Rio Tinto is now seeking to reopen talks with the government, which was re-elected in April, the episode bodes ill for plans, such as those defined through governments in the US. US and EU: to increase domestic extraction of lithium and other “green” minerals.
The threat is that the transition of power will tire the dynamic in which destructive mining is outsourced to poorer countries where civil society is less able to oppose it. Two months after the suspension of its mine in Serbia, Rio Tinto completed the $825 million acquisition of DLE-based Lithium Allocation in Salta, Argentina.
Many environmentalists argue that the fairest way to reduce greenhouse fuel emissions would be through a more radical transformation of consumption: we would want less lithium if we produced fewer electric cars and relied more on public transportation and less in the first place.
However, this vision is unlikely to stop the ongoing mining expansion in places like Catamarca. This leaves communities uncomfortably dependent on corporations that deliver on their new green promises and the officials who hold them accountable. If they don’t, the fight against climate change, as well as the droughts and heat waves it will cause, would possibly not be applicable here, Guitián says. “In the long run we will have lithium, we will have electric cars, but we will not have water,” he says. “We are located in the same place.
Bug fixes, July 26
The original edition of this story distorted the organization where Patricia Marconi works as a researcher. This is the YUCHAN Foundation, the Foundation for the Environment and Natural Resources.