[Rockhounds] Arkansas May Have Vast Lithium Reserves, Researchers Say

[Neal Hazen]

I am aware that the Smackover formation was key to petroleum gas and gas concentrate from the Mobile Bay area. If lithium is produced from brines only, that should be relatively easy and inexpensive to extract. 

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  On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 8:36 PM, Douglas Bank<dougbank at alum.mit.edu> wrote:   My son Justin was at Hick’s Dome this past weekend. I’m not sure why they were there, but it was in association with Southern Illinois University (though there was a former ISGS guy there with them).  He said that Hick’s dome appears to be enriched with heavy Rare Earths, which is unusual. It would also be pretty deep if they were to try to mine it. Then again, there are a lot of radioactives there as well, particularly thorium, and that might make it more of a challenge to process the raw material.  

Doug

> On Oct 21, 2024, at 8:17 PM, Alan Goldstein <alangoldsteinwriter at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm aware that Hicks Dome in the fluorspar district has vast quantities of
> rare earths used in magnets. An ISGS person is working to get political
> support to encourage the development of mines to exact ore. It has already
> been tested for content with analysis equipment not designed for those rare
> earths specifically and the results were impressive. And there are deeper
> fluorite deposits in greater amounts than have been mined in the past 125
> years. Now if the price of fluorite can reach a level to make them
> economical to mine... Sorry - no links. Just info from a conversation I had
> with a knowledgeable geologist earlier this year.
> 
> Alan G.
> 
> On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 8:29 PM Kreigh Tomaszewski <kreigh at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Researchers said in a recent article that Arkansas may have 19 million tons
>> of lithium, which is used in rechargeable batteries for important products
>> like phones and electric cars.
>> 
>> The researchers said in their article released last month in the journal
>> Science Advances they had “calculated that there are 5.1 to 19 million tons
>> of lithium in Smackover Formation brines in southern Arkansas,” making up
>> “35 to 136% of the current US lithium resource estimate.”
>> 
>> According to a Monday release from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), “the
>> Smackover Formation is a relic of an ancient sea that left an extensive,
>> porous, and permeable limestone geologic unit that extends under parts of
>> Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.”
>> Lithium, which has been labeled by the USGS as a critical mineral, has been
>> often obtained from brines or salt flats they evaporate into. According to
>> a projection from the International Energy Agency, demand for lithium could
>> increase by more than 40 times by 2040.
>> 
>> 
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/21/business/energy-environment/arkansas-lithium-ev-batteries.html
>> 
>> 
>> https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/researchers-say-arkansas-may-have-19m-tons-of-lithium-critical-for-battery-power/ar-AA1sFKbv
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