Lithium Related Media Articles, page-359

@mickvp25

Thanks for the news flow mate.

I will give you some examples about how much lithium the world would need to meet those EV battery demands in the very near future.

First example;
250 Solaris electric buses with 240 kWh battery pack on each which will be delivered to the Milan carrier ATM Milano;
(This is just for 250 battery powered buses, a very small quantity, just a drop in the ocean)

250kWh battery pack on each bus will contain 250kg of LCE (Lithium Carbonate Equivalent)
(1kg LCE for 1kWh battery)
250kg LCE can be produced from 101kg Li2O. (1kg Li2O = 2.473 LCE or L2CO3).

If you have a resource ore containing 1.3% Li2O then you need to mine 10t of ore to get 130kg of Li2O.

Then you need to mine 7.8t of ore @1.3% Li2O grade to get 101kg of Li2O or 250kg of LCE.

Or you need to get 2t of SC6 spodumene concentrate to meet the 250kg LCE demand. (SC6 = LCE tonnage x 8).

Result is;

Each bus will need;
7,8t of ore mined (@1.3% grade) and,
2t of Spodumene concentrate to be produced in mine (it will be shipped to refinery plant)
250kg of LCE produced in chemical refinery plant

Then multiply these numbers by 250 buses;
1,950t of ore will mined and
500t of spodumene concentrate will be produced and shipped
62,500kg of LCE will be produced in refinery plant.


Can we see where we are going?


If not, let's look at the second example from @mickvp25's post

SVOLT Energy Technology intends to build five lithium-ion battery plants by 2025 which will have a total battery capacity of 100 GWh within around seven years.

100GWh capacity (annual)? For 5 Gigafactories only?
That would need 100,000t of LCE to produce 100GWh battery
And 800,000t of spodumene concentrate to be produced and shipped to the refinery plant.

Just to remember; today's LCE production is around 260,000t.