Today, the rapidly growing electric vehicle market is driving the lithium battery market as it faces unprecedented demand growth.
As market participants compete for more mineral resources and markets, the lithium-neutral price required to produce lithium batteries has tripled from $5,000 per ton to $15,000 per ton. Lithium material extraction startup Lilac Solutions CEO According to David Snydacker, the cost of lithium materials currently accounts for about 10% of the cost of lithium battery production.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, global battery manufacturing capacity will double in 2021 to more than 278 GWh per year. Avicenne Energy, a consultancy, said global demand for lithium is expected to quadruple by 2025. The market demand for automobiles has surpassed that of consumer electronics, becoming the largest user of lithium-ion batteries.
Obviously, the battery industry needs more lithium materials, and its materials come from spodumene or salt water pools. Although there is a large amount of lithium material reserves, it takes 6 to 10 years to build a new mine, and lithium-ion batteries The factory can be opened for operation within two years.
'Historically, the lithium material market has been a market for small-scale specialty chemicals, and has not caused much attention or innovation.' Snydacker said. 'But as suppliers struggle to keep up with the rapid growth of electric vehicles, lithium batteries The industry is changing rapidly. '
Lilac Solutions of Oakland, Calif., hopes to cut the cost of lithium materials used in electric vehicle batteries by half, hoping to supply battery-grade lithium hydroxide at a cost of less than $3,000 per ton.
The company's CEO, Snydacker, said that the electric vehicle market is driving the large-scale development of the lithium battery industry. Most of the profits from manufacturing lithium batteries have been squeezed out, and people are facing increasing material costs. According to the survey, raw material costs account for lithium battery costs. 50% to 70%.
'The cost of lithium-ion electricity may fall to $80 per kWh, but in addition, people are still concerned about lithium and other raw materials.' Snydacker said.
The lithium mining industry is now a turbulent industry
Salt ponds and spodumene deposits in the desert are sources of lithium. The highest quality lithium salt pool is located in the Atacama Desert of Chile, where the solar power industry also has the world's best solar energy resources. Most of the spodumene is from Australia, followed by China.
In the 1990s, the US hard rock lithium industry lost market dominance. But higher prices are driving the recovery of mining in North Carolina, Utah, California and Arkansas. According to data from the mining.com survey, the US is only in Nevada. A mine mine mines 2% of the materials used in 2017 global lithium batteries.
In the industry's capacity forecast. Morgan Stanley expects that the supply of lithium materials will be surplus by 2021, the price will drop by 45%. Related mineral companies do not agree with Morgan Stanley's argument, the reason is to deal with bottlenecks and lithium The complexity of mining.
Roskill expects the battery-grade lithium materials market to continue to be tight. Canaccord Genuity expects new supplies to enter the market, while warning about the gap between the predictions of lithium supply and reality. Wood Mackenzie believes that salt water pools are the main source of lithium materials .
According to Snydacker, the conventional extraction of lithium from brine resources is based on evaporation ponds, which are expensive to construct, slow to start and difficult to manage. He added that 99.9% of the brine consists of water and other lower salts (mainly sodium). Processing requires a lot of water and chemicals to extract.
'Before leaving only the lithium chloride solution, all other impurities must be removed.' He said. FMC and other companies have developed lithium extraction technology based on proton membranes and alumina absorbers. MGX Minerals, Inc., based in Canada Has been testing the special membrane for screening lithium from wastewater.
GTM's Emma Foehringer Merchant points out that when extracting lithium from a salt pond, it will use up to 500,000 gallons of water per ton, which is usually in arid deserts. She pointed out that 'lithium-based batteries also require cobalt, nickel. And raw materials such as graphite, which further complicates the supply chain.'
Lilac Solutions has a 90% lithium recovery rate
Lilac Solutions claims to have developed an ion exchange-based lithium extraction process that achieves 90% lithium recovery in less than 6 hours of processing time. The evaporation cell requires two years of processing time and can only reach about 50%. Lithium recovery rate.
Lilac Solutions' goal is to become a mining technology company that works with salt pool developers to build, design and operate ion exchange units for lithium extraction. Snydacker said, 'The United States, Argentina and Chile have dozens of lithium resources. Developers know where to find brine, but what they lack is extract. '
