Dakota

http://www.jornaldenegocios.pt/empresas/industria/detalhe/litio-quando-o-po-branco-e-bom-sinal

While on the surface of the Roman hill is the cold early spring wind that stirs the underbrush, tens of meters deep machines and men interrupt a (relative) tranquility with 300 million years.
Underneath helmets and behind vests and masks, geologists and laborers continue the routine this morning, indifferent to the weather conditions of this day in Trás-os-Montes. Around a drill, in a matter of seconds they fill in numbered plastic bags. Then they line the dozens in the vicinity of the machinery and take out and wash samples.
This is how Dakota Minerals has developed part of its prospects in the Sepeda concession, Montalegre county, in the last months, where it tries to locate mineral occurrences that justify the exploitation of lithium in the region. In about 50 points has been the technology of "reverse circulation" to get the job done. A perforator grinds the rock by compression and the resulting material is led to the surface by filling one bag for each meter of material removed. In the intervals, small discharges of dust escape all around.
"The white powder is a good sign," it is said among the delegation visiting the prospecting zone. This lighter coloration of the rock means that the drilling has reached the pegmatite, the geological anomaly located between the region's shale mass and associated with the occurrence of rare minerals such as lithium.
More than five thousand meters of perforations have been carried out so far, the enthusiasm in the field is still more restrained than the "fever" that has been surrounding lithium in recent years. Demand for the lithium-ion battery industry - driven by the needs of automotive electrification or home energy storage - has driven the price skyrocketing in international markets: between 2015 and 2016 it has gone from $ 7,600 (almost € 7,200 to Current) to $ 20,000 ($ 18,800) per ton.
While a mobile phone battery uses on average five to seven grams of lithium carbonate, one that is used by a Tesla car, such as the Model S, requires 63 pounds of this material - 10,000 times more.