Economic Importance
Spodumene is an important source of lithium for use in ceramics, mobile phone and automotive batteries, medicine and as a fluxing agent. Lithium is extracted from spodumene by fusing in acid.
World production of lithium via spodumene is around 80,000 metric tonnes per annum, primarily from the Greenbushes pegmatite of Western Australia, and some Chinese and Chilean sources. The Talison mine in Greenbushes, Western Australia has an estimated reserve of 13 million tonnes.
Some think that spodumene will become a less important source of lithium due to the emergence of alkaline brine lake sources in Chile, China and Argentina, which produce lithium chloride directly. Lithium chloride is converted to lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide by reaction with sodium carbonate and calcium hydroxide respectively.
But, pegmatite-based projects benefit from being quicker to move into production than brines, which can take 18 months to 3 years, depending on evaporation rates. With pegmatites, once a mill is built, the production of lithium carbonate is only a matter of days.
Another key advantage that spodumene has over its more popular brine rivals, is the purity of the lithium carbonate it can produce. While all product used by the battery industry have to grade at least 99.5% lithium carbonate, the make up of that final 0.5% is important. If it contains higher amounts of iron, magnesium or other deleterious materials it is less attractive to end users.
Read more about this topic: Spodumene
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