Kathryn Goodenough on the Sources of Lithium for a Post-Carbon Economy
Listen to the podcast here or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Scroll down for illustrations that support the podcast.
Note - playing the podcast is not supported on Internet Explorer; please use any other browser, or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.
Kathryn Goodenough is Principal Geologist at the British Geological Survey. She studies the geology of critical raw materials, and particularly of lithium. In the podcast she describes the three different lithium source types: granitic pegmatites, sedimentary rocks, and brines. She explains the geology of these source types, and the incomplete state of our knowledge as to just how lithium is concentrated in these sources.
Podcast Illustrations
Lithium occurs within a number of minerals. Spodumene is a pyroxene mineral consisting of lithium aluminum inosilicate. Much of the world’s lithium is extracted from this mineral.
Courtesy of Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com
Petalite, another common mineral containing lithium, is a lithium aluminum phyllosilicate mineral.
Courtesy of Jorge Moreira Alves
Bikita lithium pegmatite mine in Zimbabwe.
Courtesy of LiFT
Lithium brine evaporation ponds in the Atacama desert, Chile.
Courtesy of Bloomberg.com
Large deposits of lithium in sedimentary rocks have been found at Jadar in Serbia. The rocks contain jadarite, which is a sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide.
Courtesy of pixabay.com