Several new projects in North America are on track to make the region a significant supplier of lithium to rival producers in South America and Australia.
Projects being developed by TSX mining juniors such as Western Lithium in Nevada and Quebec’s Canada Lithium and Nemaska Resources have been well documented.
But two companies have been quietly developing unique technologies to extract lithium as a by-product from existing industries.
US chemicals group Albemarle revealed to IM that it is targeting a production capacity of 20,000 tpa at its lithium carbonate project in Arkansas.
The company has been researching methods to extract lithium carbonate from brine at its Magnolia bromine operations for the past year, and is now developing a commercial-scale process.
Albemarle is aiming to start up a full-scale plant by 2013 in the southern US state to supply lithium carbonate for the global electric vehicle (EV) battery...