Some GREAT research on Lithium and brine here. It's a dry...

Some GREAT research on Lithium and brine here.
It's a dry read...better if it's saved as a PDF.

Table 1 won't paste well be is a MUST READ as it shows the chemistry make-up of each major salar in the world and confirms Hombre Muerto is one of the BEST.


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303407204_Lithium_Brines_A_Global_Perspective


*Below is the relative info on Hombre Muerto from the paper...

Salar del Hombre Muerto, Puna plateau, northwestern
Argentina: Geology in the region of Salar del Muerto is typical
of the Puna: Ordovician rocks compose most ranges, basins
are lled with late Cenozoic clastic sediments and volcanic
rocks, and magmatism is associated with faults in the region
(Aceñolaza et al., 1976).

The basin containing the Salar del
Hombre Muerto is delimited and dissected by faults. Accom-
modation space within the sedimentary basin was created by
Plio-Pleistocene strike-slip deformation (Jordan et al., 1999).
Hombre Muerto can be divided into two subbasins and sev-
eral important differences exist between the two subbasins.

Bedrock along the eastern sector of Salar del Hombre Muerto
contains metamorphic rocks, which may be some of the old-
est rocks in the region (Quenardelle, 1990). The eastern basin
also contains borates and has low chloride content, whereas
the western basin contains nearly 1 km of halite and almost no
borates (Vinante and Alonso, 2006). This is probably related
to the surface hydrology of the basin, which is dominated by
inow to the eastern subbasin. These waters drain predomi-
nantly young silicic volcanic rocks (Quenardelle, 1987).

In fact, the surface waters that enter the eastern subbasin
also drain the interior of one of the world’s largest silicic cal-
deras, Cerro Galán. This caldera is an important feature of the
southern Puna plateau that was rst recognized with space-
craft imagery (Francis et al., 1978, 1983, 1989).

An accurate geochronology of the most recent explosive silicic volcanism at
Cerro Galan is just emerging (Kay et al., 2011). Based on this
data, it is clear that caldera-forming eruptions clustered in a
<100-ka interval, the youngest of which is very precisely dated
at 2.060 ± 0.004 Ma (Hynek et al., 2011), in close agreement
with early Rb-Sr ages (2.03 ± 0.07 Ma; Sparks et al., 1985).
These silicic ignimbrites and intracaldera rocks have 87Sr/86Sr
ratios >0.710 (Sparks et al., 1985; Kay et al., 2011).

Thermal water in the region has been observed to have more radiogenic
Sr isotope ratios than these ignimbrites (Jordan et al., 1999).
This has been interpreted to indicate interaction between
thermal waters and radiogenic basement rocks. These data
and interpretations are in accord with data we have collected
from hot-spring and surface water in the Río Aguas Calientes
drainage, which drains the Cerro Galan caldera and feeds the
eastern subbasin of the Salar del Hombre Muerto (Table S1).

These samples indicate this drainage may be a signicant Li
source to the salar. A hill slope hot spring discharging into Río
Aguas Calientes has an Li content of 5.5mg/L, and the river
into which it ows (Río Aguas Calientes) has an Li content of
3.2 mg/L. Both this hot spring and the river have radiogenic
87Sr/86Sr ratios (0.71584 and 0.71763, respectively), consider-
ing that these are draining a large silicic volcanic caldera lled
with a young rhyodacite ignimbrite.

If the Río Aguas Calientes drainage is the dominant source
of Li over the last 2 Ma, its predicted that Li inux must agree
with other constraints. Typically it is assumed that halite has
been accumulating in the Salar del Hombre Muerto at a rate
of ~500 m/Ma for the last 2 Ma (Jordan et al., 1999). This
gives a minimum time for generation of the Li brine, which
prior to production had between 234 and 1,100 mg/L of Li,
with the majority of brines samples containing between 700
to 800 mg/L Li (Nicolli et al., 1982).

The climatic history over
this interval is less certain, but some constraints do exist. Sedi-
ment cores from the Salar del Hombre Muerto indicate that
shallow saline lakes have existed in the past, but the region
has become progressively drier since ~45 ka (Godfrey et al.,
2003).

Notes for Table 1: Maximum, minimum, and average Li
concentrations from Garrett (2004). Lithium concentrations
of nearby hotsprings from S. Hynek (this paper) and total Li
resource from Gruber et al. (2011).

Lithium Brines: A Global Perspective (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303407204_Lithium_Brines_A_Global_Perspective [accessed Jun 21 2018].