?mv karine bulker? expected wed 29th of june, page-54

Charl, it is reported that lithium brine's have higher levels of impurities and so require more complex processing to achieve the purity levels required for battery grade lithium and so most battery grade lithium comes from hard rock apparently. Here's one comment:

"Mr. Subbu Bettadapura who is a Malaysia-based associate director of energy research company Frost and Sullivan, says the market is set to grow massively and will be what us lithium nuts call the battery bull market. The market for electric and hybrid vehicles is, he says, conservatively-estimated to be set to grow from 2,400 units in 2008 to 1.53 million units by 2015. And from their we can only imagine how much it will grow with the demand steadily increasing. I do not see the future without a wide range of lithium mining companies trying to push their green energy Lithium Stocks toward the sky. Hard rock lithium is the best battery grade lithium out their. Battery manufacturers find that hard rock spodumene crystal lithium to be much higher in purity, their for much better in the production fase."

See, http://solar-panel-power.org/lithium-stocks-recharges-lithium-ion-mining-market

See also page 41 of the Meridian research report link below (couldn't cut and paste from pdf):
http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/Lithium_Microscope.pdf

(note, the Meridian report is from 2008 and gives an unusually negative view on lithium resource capacity than more recent accounts I think.)