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THE QUEST FOR LITHIUM DEPOSITS HITS A POTENTIAL JACKPOT


THE MCDERMITT CALDERA ON THE OREGON-NEVADA BORDER MAY BE THE LARGEST LITHIUM
DEPOSIT ON EARTH. SO, HOW DID IT GET THERE?

Rocky Planet
By Erik Klemetti
Sep 20, 2023 11:55 AMSep 20, 2023 11:57 AM
The Thacker Pass area of Nevada, the location of the McDermitt Caldera. Credit:
Wikimedia Commons.


NEWSLETTER

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Lithium! Is there a hotter element these days? The foundation of our attempt to
move anyway from the use of petroleum products for energy sits, at least right
now, on lithium and its use in batteries. Li-ion batteries are the core to
electric cars, household electrical storage and pretty much any technology that
requires the power for long periods. However, the lithium has to come from
somewhere, just like all resources from our planet ... and unlike petroleum, it
isn't life that is the ultimate source.

Lithium is a weird element. It is the third lightest, with a nucleus of 3
protons. Most of the lithium on Earth is an isotope called lithium-7, meaning
the nucleus has 3 protons and 4 neutrons. A small fraction is lithium-6, which
has one fewer neutrons.

Elemental Distribution in Universe. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.


Being such a simple element, it turns out that some lithium was produced during
the Big Bang along with the hydrogen and helium of the universe. However, thanks
to the processes of stellar fusion, lithium is not nearly as abundant as many
elements much heavier that it. In fact, the "lithium divot" (see above) in the
elemental composition of the universe means that lithium is ~10 million times
less abundant than helium (element 2) and 100,000 times less abundant than
carbon (element 6).

When the Earth was formed out of the primordial solar nebula, light elements
like hydrogen, helium and lithium were mostly left out of the planet's materials
(beyond hydrogen in water). Estimates today suggest the Earth's crust is about
0.002% lithium, ranking it between such elements as scandium and niobium - not
exactly everyday elements.


MINING LITHIUM TODAY

Right now, much of the world's lithium is mined from deposits in Australia and
Chile/Argentina. That's because the places were lithium is mined come in two
main flavours: (1) igneous (derived from magma) rock deposits and (2)
sedimentary deposits from drying lakes. One of the largest lithium deposits in
the world is in the sediments filling the mostly-dry lakebed in Bolivia called
the Salar de Uyuni and the Chilean/Argentine deposits are of similar origin.
Most of Australia's deposits are of the "hard rock" variety across Western
Australia.

Salt deposits in the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The US ... well, it doesn't currently produce much lithium of its own. There is
a single operating lithium mine in Nevada that extracts the element from brines
(mineral-rich waters), so it is more like the South American deposits.

The US imports only about 25% of the lithium it uses, but that is a product of
actually how little lithium is used in the US. Over 80% of all the global
lithium is used to make batteries, but that industry really doesn't exist in the
US right now. In 2022, according to the US Geological Survey, the US used about
3,000 tonnes of lithium. Compare that to China and its lithium battery industry
that used over 300,000 tonnes in 2021!

So, the real issue isn't that China isn't producing more lithium -- it does have
some lithium deposits, but it isn't rich in it. It does, however, process more
lithium into batteries than any country in the world. Much of the rules related
to EV tax credits in the US are linked to moving this production and processing
of lithium from China to the US and its allies.

The US is investing almost $2 billion into identifying lithium deposits so that
the country can expand from its single current lithium mine. Multiple new
deposits have been identified, mainly in the western US. One of them appears to
be the current "mother lode" of lithium and possibly the largest lithium deposit
on the planet.


THE VOLCANO THAT ERUPTED LITHIUM

Major lithium deposits across the world (right) and the location of the
McDermitt Caldera in Oregon/Nevada (right). Credit: Benson et al. (2017), Nature
Communications.

The McDermitt caldera is located along the Oregon-Nevada border. It can be
consider the great-great-great grandfather of the Yellowstone Caldera meaning it
was one of the first identified manifestations of the mantle plume that
currently sits under Wyoming. During the time that the McDermitt caldera was
active between 15 and 17 million years ago, it produced some huge explosive
volcanic eruptions topping at over 1000 cubic kilometers of ash and debris.

Thanks to the somewhat unique chemistry of these volcanic deposits, the
McDermitt caldera eruptions set into motion a series of geologic processes that
resulted it incredibly rich lithium deposits. This all adds up to the potential
for over 20-40 million metric tons of lithium resources in the caldera area --
an amount that would move the US into the top of lithium suppliers globally. The
history of the deposit was recently detailed in a research paper by Thomas
Benson and others in Science Advances.

The lithium in the McDermitt caldera ended up there in a fortuitous fashion.
First, you needed an eruption that could form a caldera. This happened about
16.3 million years when the McDermitt caldera was formed during an eruption that
would rival the biggest from the modern Yellowstone caldera.

Thanks to the magma being formed partially by incorporating the North American
crust underneath the area, elements like lithium were enriched in the molten
rock. Once the eruption happened, half of that 1000 cubic kilometers spilled out
away from the area as pyroclastic flows while the other half fell into the
caldera formed by the collapse of the land during the eruption.

Layers of sediment from a lake that formed in the McDermitt Caldera. Credit:
Henry et al. (2017), Geosphere.

Now you have ~500 cubic kilometre of hot volcanic debris in a closed basin (the
caldera). As it begins to cool, the basin fills with water and sediment,
leaching some of the lithium out of the volcanic debris and enriching it in the
sediment. Then, as volcanism continuing in (and especially under) the caldera,
hot fluids come up through faults and fractures, leaching even more lithium and
keeping parts of the sediment warm.

In doing so, you perform a magic trip. You convert one type of magnesium rich
clay into a lithium rich clay (called illite). The clays are being made by the
breakdown of volcanic glass and minerals in the caldera, but then they get
enriched in lithium due to hydrothermal alteration -- the process where heated
fluids can add or remove elements.


DID THE US HIT THE MOTHER LODE OF LITHIUM?

In the end, the McDermitt caldera area has clays that are upwards of 5 to 12
weight percent lithium! That is a lot of lithium concentrated into these clay
minerals. When considering the size and thickness of the lake sediments
containing these clays, the size of the lithium deposit could be multiple times
larger than the Salar de Uyuni deposit, the current world champion for lithium
resources.

Of course, none of this is without consequence. There are clearly environmental
impact questions that need to be answered about how the lithium can be minded
and processed. It uses a lot of water and damages the surface ecosystem to
create the open pit mines. What would the point of doing this be if lithium
extraction creates as much local or global environmental damage as the stuff it
is meant to be replacing? These questions don't have answers right now.

However, we do know that there is immense pressure to create better lithium
reserves for the US and the McDermitt caldera could be a first step towards
that. Solving the problems of potential environmental damage from utilising this
lithium may be the next big step now that we've pinpointed a place where we
might get this rare element.

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