The McDermitt caldera contains 20 million – 40 million tonnes of lithium, making it the world’s largest. (Jamey Pyles/BLM Nevada/Flickr/CC BY SA 2.0)
Probably the only resource that matters for the future, lithium. In the frantic quest to find more, the world is about to breath a sigh of relief.
Researchers claim they discovered the world’s largest lithium deposit in the McDermitt volcano, on the Nevada and Oregon border. They say the caldera holds between 20 million and 40 million tonnes of lithium, allowing America to produce batteries without depending on China. This also suggests that global battery demands could be met for decades.
The supervolcano erupted approximately 16 million years ago, causing the crater to produce a huge amount of lithium metal. This is more than the other deposit underneath a Bolivian salt flat, which is now the 2nd largest in the world. According to the team’s analysis, the volcano’s crater consists of a unique illite claystone that has 1.3% -2.4 % lithium. That’s nearly twice the amount found in magnesium smectite.
This map represents the global lithium resources type and size. (Image Credit: Benson, et al.)
“Developing a sustainable and diverse supply chain to meet lower-carbon energy and national security goals requires mining the highest-grade domestic lithium resources with the lowest waste:ore strip ratios to [minimize] both the volume of material extracted from the Earth,” the researchers wrote in their paper.“Volcano sedimentary lithium resources have the potential to meet this requirement, as they tend to be shallow, high-tonnage deposits with low waste: ore strip ratios.”
Lithium Americas Corporation geologists, who discovered the deposits with GNS Science and Oregon State University, say the lithium mining could start in 2026. Mining will be done by extracting clay consisting of water before splitting up the lithium-bearing grains from other larger minerals via a centrifuge. Afterward, the clay gets leached in sulfuric acid vats, pulling out the lithium.
Environmental groups started protesting after learning about the proposed mine placement in the Nevada crater region. Two tribes also raised concerns, stating it would be constructed on sacred land.
Elon Musk chimed in and said that the lithium deposit could be beneficial to the EV industry if it’s efficiently refined. “Lithium ore is quite common throughout the world. The limiting factor is lithium refining,” Musk wrote on X.“Same goes for the cathode, which is primarily iron (medium range cars) or nickel (long range) and the anode, which is carbon. Refining matters more than ore.”
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