I wonder if these new technologies made solid lithium ores less...

I wonder if these new technologies made solid lithium ores less profitable on top of being much more plentiful.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/05/how-new-lithium-extraction-tech-could-help-us-meet-ev-targets.html

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• Livent’s most recent sustainability report indicates that it uses 71.4 metric tons of fresh water per metric ton of lithium carbonate equivalent, or LCE, produced. Lilac reported that in pilot testing it uses between 10 and 20 metric tons of fresh water, while EnergyX says it uses less than 20 metric tons.
  
  China-based Sunresin says that it recycles all of its fresh water, and that its newer projects will operate without evaporation ponds.

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The throughput time increase is incredible.18 months of evaporation down to hours within a day through a series of salting out reactions.

Promise?

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• ″Over the last 10 years, 90% of new lithium production has come from hard rock projects. But hard rock projects are increasingly expensive as we go into lower grade resources. And if you add up all the hard rock projects, there’s just not enough resource out there to meet automaker goals. It’s the brine resources that are large enough to electrify the vehicle industry,” Snydacker said.

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I did not know about this technology until today, it is a mood booster. Makes sense why we didn't look for hard rock Li either.

Thanks, Queenslander I'm convinced the Li assets are worth quite a bit now.