In the United States, a lithium rush is about to happen, almost 200 years after California’s gold rush. Geologists working for the government are trying to find the valuable element because demand for it has skyrocketed.
Scientists paid for by a mining company said in September 2023 that they had found what might be the biggest lithium source ever in an old US supervolcano. Now, government scientists on the other side of the country have found another hidden lithium source that could meet almost half of the country’s needs.
It’s hiding in the waste water from the gas fracking business in Pennsylvania.
Lithium, which is used to make batteries for electric cars, is one of the most important parts of the country’s move to green energy. There is only one big lithium mine in the US, though, so the country has to import what it needs for now.
The US Department of Energy wants to change that very badly. By 2030, they want all lithium to be made in the United States.
But growing the lithium business in the U.S. is very controversial because mining can damage natural areas, release harmful chemicals, and invade sacred Native American land.
On the other hand, lithium-ion batteries are seen as an important part of the world’s move to renewable energy because they store power made by the sun and the wind. It’s important to find a source of lithium that doesn’t hurt the environment more than it needs to be hurt, but it’s not easy to find a clean answer.
The Marcellus Shale is a layer of solid rock that runs through Pennsylvania. It is full of natural gas. The geological basis was formed by volcanoes almost 400 million years ago, and it has lithium in it from the ash of volcanoes.
To quote Justin Mackey, a researcher at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pennsylvania, “mining the subsurface” has been happening for a very long time as deep groundwater has broken down the lithium in these rocks.
When wastewater is dug up from the ground by fracking, Mackey and his friends have found that it has an amazing amount of lithium in it.
Key says, “We just didn’t know how much was in there.”
Pennsylvania is one of the most problematic states when it comes to fracking, which has caused a lot of health and environmental problems.
An L-shaped hole is drilled into the ground so that water can be pumped down. This pushes things deeper down, like gas, out into the open.
“Oil and gas wastewater is becoming a bigger problem.” “For now, it’s only getting minimal care and re-injections,” says Mackey.
Doing things like this could waste valuable lithium. One more way to use the trash could be to find and measure the lithium reserves in the wastewater from fracking. This new study shows this.
The area study is based on information given by oil and gas companies to the government about the things that are found in their wastewater. Mackey and his colleagues looked at data from 515 wells in Pennsylvania’s wastewater that was taken from 2012 to 2023.
Based on what they found, the Marcellus Shale “has the potential to provide significant lithium yields for the foreseeable future”—as long as fracking keeps happening.
Researchers think that if they can get even a small amount of lithium out of the wastewater from fracking in the state, it would be enough to meet more than 30% of the present US demand.
That sounds really interesting, but we don’t know yet what the natural effects of taking lithium out of fracking wastewater might be, and the wastewater is only there if fracking continues.
In order to meet our climate goals, the world’s need for lithium is going to have to rise by 400% over the next few decades. We still don’t know how the world’s lithium needs will be met or what new environmental problems those answers might cause.
