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The Lithium Supplement 2010: Oilfield brine

July 27, 2010 - 00:00 GMT

KEYWORDS: Lithium supplement , Li , oilfield brine , Alberta , oil , gas

Gerry Clarke reviews Alberta’s oilfield brine potential as a new and different lithium resource that has quietly emerged over the last two years. While the gas companies serve up waste brine containing anomalous lithium values, its future as a resource is critically dependent on processing advances and, ironically, the continuing success of the province’s oil and gas industry and, of course, demand

These have been compared with Nevada’s Silver Peak resource. Silver Peak’s shallower-lying playa brine was the first of its type to be exploited for lithium in 1966 by Foote Mineral Co. (now Chemetall Foote), with the major advantage of solar pre-concentration under the hot Nevada sun and wind.

Alberta is different. The host geological setting of the anomalous lithium values is deep at 2,600-3,500 metres below surface and commercially unprecedented. The Albertan climate disallows established solar pre-concentration methods. The oilfield brine chemistry is complex and, despite comparisons with Silver Peak, low in lithium content at up to 140ppm less than a tenth of Chile’s Salar de Atacama continental brines, and higher in magnesium relative to lithium.

The technical challenge is the development of a cost effective brine process to recover lithium chloride and convert it to saleable lithium carbonate. Two companies already...

All material subject to strictly enforced copyright laws. © Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC.

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