Cradle-to-gate life cycle comparison of lithium from brine and spodumene ore. Li 2 CO 3 and LiOH•H 2 O from brine have lower life cycle GHG emissions than from ore. Lithium source meaningfully affects lithium ion battery environmental footprints. Fresh water consumption is lower for brine-based products than ore-based products.
Results of the LCA show that concentrated lithium brine and its associated end products can vary significantly in energy consumption, GHG emissions, and water consumption depending upon the resource allocation method used in the analysis.
Those results highlight that the effect of concentrated lithium brine allocation approach does not yield significant variance in the battery's GHG emissions, but that brine-sourced lithium yields NMC622 batteries with 20% lower emissions and NMC811 batteries with 10% lower emissions than ore-sourced lithium.
Jaskula also reports that worldwide lithium consumption between 2006 and 2016 grew from 15,000 tonnes Li (80,000 tonnes LCE) to more than 35,000 tonnes Li (185,000 tonnes LCE).
Recently, Schomberg et al. (2021) conducted a spatially explicit LCA to determine a water scarcity footprint based on the AWARE scarcity system for lithium ion batteries and included evaporated water originating from brine in that footprint. That approach is different from the one used here.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance projects that production of lithium in 2030 will be 1.5 million tonnes LCE (~280,000 tonnes lithium), based on nameplate capacity and de-risked supply (Lu and Frith, 2021), and projects the consumption of lithium to range between 1.3 and 2.0 million tonnes LCE (240,000−375,000 tonnes Li).