Chile is the world’s second-largest lithium producer after Australia, due to output from SQM and rival Albemarle, which is planning its personal use of DLE within the nation.
Boric’s mandate has sparked a frenzy amongst DLE corporations to function in Chile, which has the world’s largest lithium reserves. However thus far, DLE know-how has not labored at business scale with out the usage of ponds.
Santiago-based SQM studied greater than 70 DLE applied sciences earlier than choosing 12 for pilot testing, with two of these exams occurring now, Carlos Diaz, head of SQM’s lithium division, informed Reuters on the sidelines of the Fastmarkets Lithium Provide and Battery Uncooked Supplies Convention in Las Vegas.
Given the big dimension and chemical complexity of the Atacama, SQM is prone to decide a number of DLE corporations as it really works to section within the applied sciences to spice up output to an annual vary of 280,000 to 300,000 metric tons of lithium by 2060, up from an estimated 200,000 tons this 12 months, he mentioned.
“We want to have a number of (DLE) options,” mentioned Diaz, an engineer by coaching who joined SQM in 1996. “It’s tough to decide on one that’s going to suit and be appropriate for every kind of various chemical substances that may be in several types of brine.”
Aurora Williams, Chile’s mining minister, mentioned in April she had no plans to mandate a selected sort of DLE know-how to be used within the nation.
SQM earlier this 12 months examined a DLE know-how from France-based Adionics, through which it has an funding.
Key concerns for SQM embody DLE’s greater electrical energy utilization than evaporation ponds in addition to the big freshwater use of some variations, Diaz mentioned. The corporate can also be involved about how reinjection of brine after lithium is separated might have an effect on aquifers, he mentioned.
“You need to be very cautious with the way you have an effect on the environmental equilibrium” of the aquifers, he added.
After the choice, SQM must apply for environmental permits with Chilean regulators, a course of that might take as much as three years, Diaz mentioned.
Elsewhere, SQM has been making worldwide investments into onerous rock lithium mining, together with into Australia’s Azure Minerals, a part of a push that Diaz says goals to broaden the corporate’s geographic focus.
“We’ve got been exploring totally different alternate options exterior of Chile in an effort to diversify,” Diaz mentioned. “With a purpose to maintain growing the manufacturing of lithium as demand is rising, we have to diversify and search for new sources.”
(By Ernest Scheyder; Modifying by Jamie Freed)