Lithium Boom Spurs Production From Brine: Commodities
September 21, 2012, Bloomberg – Lithium demand, seen doubling in the next eight years on sales of batteries used in electric vehicles, is spurring a U.S. company to build a factory to extract the metal from brine in California.
Simbol Materials LLC’s proposed Imperial Valley plant near the Mexican border would slash the time and cost needed to extract lithium from salty water, Chief Executive Officer Luka Erceg said in an interview. The closely held, Pleasanton, California-based company may boost output from an initial 8,000 tons a year to as much as 64,000 tons by the end of the decade, Erceg said, equal to 21 percent of projected global demand.