The geothermal plant in Bruchsal has been in operation since 2009, initially to generate electricity and heat. Lithium is now also being mined here. The well is more than 2500 meters deep.
15 million electric cars could be on German roads by 2030. Lithium is required for their batteries. Will it come soon from the Upper Rhine Graben?
So far, petrol and diesel cars have dominated the streets. But according to the will of the EU, they will no longer receive new registrations from 2035. Accordingly, the industry is converting to electric cars. According to the new federal government, 15 million of these will be on the road in Germany in eight years. An ambitious goal that requires sufficient charging stations across the country and enough willing buyers to be found.
It is also questionable where all the raw materials for the car batteries should come from. Lithium-ion batteries, which are also installed in numerous other electronic devices such as mobile phones and notebooks, are currently mainly used. The lithium required for this is now mainly extracted in Australia and processed in China, where it is dissolved from the rock using chemical processes, using large amounts of CO2. Other large deposits exist in the South American Andes. In the deserts of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, water containing lithium has to be pumped from salt lakes to the surface, where it then evaporates. Lithium can only be extracted there as a result of this major ecological intervention. In addition, there are the transport routes around the world with corresponding CO2 emissions.
CO2-free mining of lithium in Germany An environmentally friendly alternative is right on our doorstep: in the Upper Rhine Graben on the German-French border, the groundwater at a depth of two to five kilometers contains a high concentration of dissolved lithium salt. If you pump the thermal water to the surface, it has a temperature of over 120 degrees. It is therefore suitable for generating electricity and heat, but also for "fluid or water mining", as Professor Jochen Kolb from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) reports. Because in these deep waters, 160 grams of lithium-containing salts are dissolved per liter, 4.5 times as much as in the sea. The lithium content is around 150 milligrams per liter.
In recent years, Jochen Kolb and the researchers from KIT have tested various substances in the laboratory with which they can adsorb the lithium from the salts. Well suited is manganese oxide, which holds lithium ions like a sieve while foreign substances such as sodium slide through. Together with the energy supplier EnBW, the technology is to be tested on a larger scale in a pilot plant in Bruchsal from mid-2022. According to Kolb, water had to flow through the facility in Bruchsal for 40 to 50 minutes in order to collect enough lithium for a Tesla car battery. The promotion itself is completely CO2-neutral, in addition to energy generation.
In the future, the extraction should take place in significantly larger quantities. Vulcan Energy Resources has already signed deals with automakers VW, Stellantis and Renault. From 2026, the German-Australian company wants to deliver 40,000 tons of lithium a year from the Upper Rhine Graben. Enough to build about one to two million car batteries. The company has already bought a geothermal power plant in Insheim. Others are to follow with the help of investors.
There are still unanswered questions for investorsBut there are unanswered questions for investors, as Professor Steffen Kolb from the Berlin University of Applied Sciences says: "Nobody knows whether the lithium in the thermal waters is reduced by the extraction, or whether it is washed afterwards", i.e. whether and in which speed it gets out of the surrounding rock and back into the water. It depends on how long the deposits last. Vulcan Energy Resources has estimated the lithium reserves in their production areas in the Upper Rhine Graben at over one million tons.
In addition, there are other imponderables for investors: the federal government is planning to expand electromobility and is providing appropriate funding. However, only the coming years will show whether millions of new buyers can be found in view of the continuing high prices for e-cars. In addition, not everyone in the Upper Rhine Graben gets carried away by the new gold rush mood. Most recently, the city of Achern categorically rejected drilling in its area. It is feared that this could be accompanied by earthquakes of the kind that have already occurred in Basel and Landau. However, researchers are working on new safe processes and the Federal Environment Agency also states in a study that geothermal energy does not entail any unmanageable risks.
Lithium from the Upper Rhine can only cover part of the demand Does this clear the way for sustainable e-cars with batteries "made in Germany"? only partly. Because for this you need another problematic raw material: cobalt. Most of this is being won in the Democratic Republic of the Congo - along with reports of poor working conditions, human rights abuses and environmental degradation. However, there are already approaches to replacing cobalt with other substances such as nickel in particular, or also sulfur or manganese.
So the chances are good that in a few years it will actually be possible to build sustainable e-cars with the help of the funding from the Upper Rhine Graben. However, the German Raw Materials Agency estimates the lithium requirement in Germany alone at up to 168 thousand tons in 2030. With the currently planned systems, geothermal energy could only contribute about a quarter of this. Accordingly, the EU is demanding that its member states also mine lithium at other European locations, such as in the Ore Mountains or in Carinthia in Austria. There, however, the raw material comes from conventional mining. For a truly sustainable turnaround in transport, further measures are needed, such as more recycling and holistic mobility concepts in which the use of electric cars is just another building block alongside the expansion of public transport.
Translated with DeepL
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