This is an extract from the Mr Lithium interview regarding...

This is an extract from the Mr Lithium interview regarding replacements for lithium and DLE - it seems DLE is a way off and the USA has challenges extracting lithium from local Brine sources. I note no questions about hydrogen.

Ed Coyne: Let's talk about some innovations in extraction or techniques. Have any innovations or techniques come to light that makes this extraction process faster, safer and more plentiful? You're tethered to this market, so what can you share with us on that?

Joe Lowry: In the last five years, the Chinese have figured out how to do conventional technology to a very high level that's good enough for a battery. The original lithium industry was predicated on industrial demands, and a battery requires a much higher quality product that the existing plants weren't designed to do. You're hearing a lot now about direct lithium extraction and a process that's 10,000 times faster. That's absolute abject nonsense.

Nobody's brought that to market. There's only one company doing a modified form of DLE, or direct lithium extraction, in the West. The Chinese have some moderately successful direct lithium extraction, but most of those assets use pods too. The real issue here is that a lot of brine in North America is associated with oil fields. You must have direct lithium extraction to exploit that. The evaporation characteristics in North America aren't like they are at 4,000 meters in the Andes. We can't build ponds and extract lithium the way they do in South America very effectively in North America.

Direct lithium extraction will unlock both quantity and quality because it will yield a higher-quality product if properly implemented. We're still five years away from seeing any significant impact. I'm on the board of a DLE company, so I'm not anti-DLE, but I am a rational actor in the industry.

Ed Coyne: You can only discuss lithium by mentioning sodium replacements or other alternative technologies? How far are we away from things like that even putting a dent in the lithium supply? What else is going on out there?

Joe Lowry: It takes a lithium price to make sodium economic, and then sodium still has technology challenges. It would only be for the energy storage system and renewables, where that would get great traction. If you're talking about EVs, it would be more like buying a $5,000 EV in China that's more like a glorified golf cart; yes, you could have sodium in that, but you'll never get sodium where you have lithium-ion.

I welcome sodium because anything that takes the pressure off lithium to me is good for the lithium industry. After all, the lithium industry is small and not ready for prime time. There are new technologies out there, but they all include lithium. Whether you're talking about solid state or lithium theme variations, all the good stuff comes back to a lithium chemical or metal.