Running Commentary on the SP Movements., page-5295

"The lithium concentration of the final rich brine is 5000 ppm. This is a twelve-fold increase over the well brine concentration and an eight-fold increase over the point at which the brine initially becomes saturated. This means that for each 100 pounds of well brine, 78 pounds of water are removed by solar evaporation and 13.5 pounds of salts are precipitated to produce eight pounds of final rich brine containing 0.04 lbs. of lithium. The precipitated salt is mainly NaCI. The precipitates contain voids which are filled with brine. This brine, "trapped brine," represents a loss of lithium."



Now idk about you, but 78 pounds of water being removed by solar evaporation is going to take a lot of TIME, and requires a pond to be rather large in order to do it quickly (which sits atop the salar brines). All for 0.04lb of Lithium.

The less ppm of lithium in the ground, the larger the ponds need to be and more salt water you need to haul in and then pump back out. I have a table here saying one particular pond was 780 Acres.......

https://web.archive.org/web/20090404023936/http://www.saltinstitute.org/content/download/1089/6304

Now perhaps I am missing something, but I've been reading up on the brines extraction process and I have to say "I don't get it" in terms of doing large volumes, between the time it takes and the haulage required etc, I'm not sure how they are keeping up with volumes required by battery industry so far.

Despite it being more rare, I'd have to say the spodumain/schist crystals have got to be a better option for industry.