[Rockhounds] The new 'gold rush' for green lithium

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Lithium is crucial for the transition to renewables, but mining it has been
environmentally costly. Now a more sustainable source of lithium has been
found deep beneath our feet.
C

Cornwall, 1864. A hot spring is discovered nearly 450m (1,485ft) below
ground in the Wheal Clifford, a copper mine just outside the mining town of
Redruth. Glass bottles are immersed to their necks in its bubbling waters,
carefully sealed and sent off for testing. The result is the discovery of
so great a quantity of lithium – eight or 10 times as much per gallon as
had been found in any hot spring previously analysed – that scientists
suspect “it may prove of great commercial value”.

But 19th-Century England had little need for the element, and this 122C
(252F) lithium-rich water continued boiling away in the dark for more than
150 years.

Fast forward to autumn 2020, and a site nearby the Wheal Clifford in Cornwall
has been confirmed as having some of the world’s highest grades of lithium
in geothermal waters.
<https://www.cornishlithium.com/cornish-lithium-releases-globally-significant-lithium-grades/>
The
commercial use for lithium in the 21st Century could not be clearer. It is
found not only inside smart phones and laptops, but is now vital to the
clean energy transition, for the batteries that power electric vehicles and
store energy so renewable power can be released steadily and reliably.


https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201124-how-geothermal-lithium-could-revolutionise-green-energy