The US may be on the verge of unlocking a $2.3 trillion hidden treasure trove of ‘white gold’ that could supercharge the nation’s economy for years to come.
A new chemical extraction process will soon allow miners to take advantage of approximately 19 million tons of lithium sitting underground in southwest Arkansas.
Called Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE), officials for Standard Lithium said the technology will allow them to begin harvesting this vital resource and selling it by 2028.
Lithium is often called white gold because it’s a key mineral used in the creation of batteries in electric cars, phones, and other digital devices. It even helps in the creation of pharmaceuticals, glass, ceramics, and military equipment.
A recent study estimated that there could be enough lithium inside a giant slab of limestone rock, known as the Smackover Formation, to meet the entire global demand for electric cars in 2030 nine times over.
Using DLE, miners will soon be able to pull out lithium-rich saltwater from underground reservoirs in Arkansas, filter out the minerals, and return the processed groundwater to the Earth within 24 hours.
The 2024 estimate of 19 million tons of lithium in the Smackover Formation would be enough to erase the nation’s current dependence on China, which controls roughly 70 percent of the world’s lithium supply.
Katherine Knierim from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said: ‘We estimate there is enough dissolved lithium present in that region to replace US imports of lithium and more.’
A $2.3 trillion lithium treasure trove of lithium was discovered by scientists in the Smackover Formation in southeastern Arkansas
Commercial lithium company Standard Lithium has revealed that their new extraction method will soon target the Smackover Formation in Arkansas
With help from a $225 million federal grant, Standard Lithium said it is building a large processing plant in Lewisville, which will create hundreds of jobs, all aimed at turning the US into a global lithium supplier within two years.
Andy Robinson, president and chief operating officer of Standard Lithium, told NewsNation: ‘This beneath our feet is an unconventional lithium resource. It hasn’t been developed today because it needed a new technology to unlock it.’
DLE has been in development for years, with Standard Lithium forming partnerships with other companies to test its effectiveness for extracting vital minerals in 2018.
The process involves pumping saltwater, also called brine, out of deep underground reservoirs in Arkansas, running it through special materials that selectively grab and remove the lithium while leaving most other minerals behind.
This creates a purer lithium chloride solution that has to go through additional steps to purify and concentrate it into a usable substance.
Those include ‘reverse osmosis,’ a high-pressure filtering system that squeezes out extra water to make the lithium more concentrated.
A series of chemical treatments swap out remaining unwanted impurities, such as calcium, magnesium, sodium, or boron, to create even cleaner results.
Once it’s highly concentrated and very pure, the lithium chloride solution is converted into battery-grade lithium carbonate through a final chemical reaction that typically adds an industrial chemical known as soda ash, or sodium carbonate, to create solid lithium crystals.
Lithium is used in the creation of electric car batteries, military equipment, and even medications (Stock Image)
The Smackover Formation is like a giant underground sponge made of ancient limestone dating back to the Jurassic period, approximately 200 million years ago.
It stretches across parts of the southern US, including southern and eastern Texas, southern Arkansas, northern Louisiana, eastern Mississippi, southwestern Alabama, and parts of the Florida panhandle.
The Smackover is full of brine trapped in its pores, and it’s already been used for decades to extract oil, natural gas, and bromine, a chemical used in products such as flame retardants.
Those oil and gas projects uncovered thousands of tons of lithium accidentally brought to the surface in the waste from drilling.
USGS scientists published their report on the formation in Science Advances, revealing that the massive discovery could be converted into 100million tons of lithium carbonate crystals.
In terms of what this untapped ‘gold mine’ in Arkansas could mean, a typical cell phone battery uses just five to seven grams of lithium carbonate.
If the study’s maximum estimates are right and there are 19 million tons of lithium under Arkansas alone, that could be turned into 20 trillion cell phone batteries.
Even on the low side of the USGS estimate, which calculated that there could be 5.1 million tons of lithium in the Arkansas segment of the formation, that amount would equal a third of the entire US lithium supply.
Standard Lithium said its new extraction technique received patents in 2022 and went into full commercialization in 2024. They continued to refine DLE throughout last year.
‘This is about having control over the resources that you need in your society, your warfighter, your military, your industrial complex,’ Robinson added. ‘Everyone will need access to this particular critical mineral for the foreseeable decades.’
