“We estimate there is enough dissolved lithium present in that region to replace US imports of lithium and more.”
Posted by Leslie Eastman
Tucked beneath the pine forests and farm fields of southwest Arkansas, drillers have stumbled upon a critical mineral jackpot: lithium in the region’s ancient saltwater formations.
Last fall, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that an estimated 5 to 19 million tons of lithium are located in southwestern Arkansas. That is enough lithium to meet the world’s estimated 2030 demand for lithium nine times over.
The lithium is located in the Smackover Formation, a geological formation created by an ancient sea that extends across southwest Arkansas and several neighboring states. Back in the 1920s, oil was discovered in the Smackover Formation, setting off a boom in southern Arkansas.
The Smackover Formation is a deep (roughly 8,000–10,000 feet) carbonate aquifer that has been tapped for decades for oil, gas, and bromine-bearing brines, resulting in extensive existing subsurface data and infrastructure. Recent technological developments now enable the U.S. to tap previously unusable brines to extract lithium, a key component of batteries, pharmaceuticals, glass, ceramics, and military equipment.
Now, with the development of the new Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) process, this quiet corner of the South is suddenly staring at an economic bonanza.
A recent study estimated that there could be enough lithium inside a giant slab of limestone rock, known as the Smackover Formation, to meet the entire global demand for electric cars in 2030 nine times over.
Using DLE, miners will soon be able to pull out lithium-rich saltwater from underground reservoirs in Arkansas, filter out the minerals, and return the processed groundwater to the Earth within 24 hours.
The 2024 estimate of 19 million tons of lithium in the Smackover Formation would be enough to erase the nation’s current dependence on China, which controls roughly 70 percent of the world’s lithium supply.
Katherine Knierim from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said: ‘We estimate there is enough dissolved lithium present in that region to replace US imports of lithium and more.’
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In DLE, lithium‑rich brine from reservoirs, oilfield water, or geothermal fluids is first pretreated to remove impurities, then passed through lithium‑selective media that capture Li⁺ while most other ions remain in the brine. Then the lithium is stripped into a concentrated solution (often lithium chloride) and further processed into battery‑grade lithium carbonate or hydroxide. Unused brine is typically reinjected underground.
The entire process enables faster production (hours to days), higher recoveries, and a smaller land and water footprint compared with conventional methods.
The new process needs to be scaled, but the company has been refining it since 2024 and anticipates bringing the lithium product to market by 2028. The area is poised for economic growth and long-term prosperity.
The DLE process, developed with Koch Technology Solutions and Equinor, extracts lithium directly from brine, offering a faster and cleaner alternative to traditional mining. However, this method has yet to be proven at a commercial scale in the U.S., making Arkansas a testing ground for the future of lithium production.
The project promises economic benefits for South Arkansas, including new high-skilled jobs, major investments in rural communities, and growth for local businesses. Standard Lithium is also negotiating up to $1 billion in project financing with international lenders and export credit agencies.
Ultimately, what is happening in Smackover feels less like a regional development project and more like a distinctly American magic trick: turning salt water into the modern world’s version of gold.
Engineers and chemists are stitching together advanced membranes, custom sorbents, and real‑time controls in a high‑tech update of the old oil patch, proving that the same ingenuity that once fueled the petroleum age can now power the battery age.
As brine flows down and lithium‑rich solution comes back up, Arkansas becomes a live demonstration that American innovation can rewrite the value of its own geology…reworking the “waste” of yesterday into the strategic treasure of tomorrow, one shimmering stream of salt water at a time.
More US self-sufficiency…more emphasis…
Less self-aggrandizing bolding.
More US self-sufficiency…more emphasis…
More US self-sufficiency…more emphasis…
Perhaps, since EVs are a “No Brainer” dead end, they should consider turning that Lithium into pharmaceutical grade drugs and start treating the DEIs and SJWs and EcoNutz with it. Probably include 90% of the Socialist Democrats as well.
Lithium is used in lots of products besides car bombs (figure of speech).
(I have a tube of lithium grease near my workbench.)
Lithium is used in lots of products besides car bombs
(figure of speech).For years, we’ve been hearing about how the West is relying too much on China for rare earths. That would be compounded by an overzealous push for windmills and EV batteries, naturally. But regardless of why we need them, I never believed that somehow China was naturally gifted with any disproportionate amount of these materials on the planet. Just in our own country of 3.6 million square miles, there are vast areas that haven’t been fully explored and developed geologically. That’s going to be true in Alaska and the western states, but apparently even places like Arkansas have surprising deposits of these minerals.
It’s China’s processing, smelting and refining capacity that totally dominates the supply of metals and minerals required for all aspects of renewable generation, including rare earths.
To get to this point has been entirely deliberate and exceedingly well planned on the part of the Chinese, and it has taken them more than two decades to get there, including establishing Chinese ownership of mining operations worldwide – copper and cobalt in the DRC, for example, the concentrates of these ores being treated in China.
Their proportion of global refined production of metals and minerals required for all renewable equipment, batteries for EVs and for grid-scale storage, and increasing grid size by 3-fold, etc, as follows:
Graphite: 99%; manganese (sulphate): 95%; rare earths: 90%; cobalt: 75%; lithium: 70%; antimony: 70%; nickel: 65%; aluminium: 60%; copper: 50%.
And, of course, they produce 80% of global polysilicon and 85% of battery cells, as well as over 80% of global wind turbines and solar panels.
Clever b#stards, the Chinese . . . and bloody dangerous.
Indeed, now imagine if they acquired Taiwan. They’d have the majority of advanced chip production in addition to the rare earths production. Dangerous indeed.
China lacks only one thing compare to the US in the metals industry: Environmentalists.
China does not have to deal with lawsuits filed by environmental organizations every time anyone has the glimmer of an idea to open a mine or processing plant.
OK, two things: China does not have roughly 50 percent of the Politburo taking a position against mining and processing, again to save the environment. Oh, and not produce CO2 from the mining and processing.
I expect that once Democrats are back in control of the government of the USA any mining in Arkansas and elsewhere will be shut down, even as the EV mandates come back into force.
I suspect China is missing something else, lawyers.
That the deposits exist has been known for awhile.
What was lacking was an economical way to extract them.
From the article, the proposed method of extraction has yet to be proven economical at commercial scales.
Dare I say it…. Leave it in the ground
👍
Dumb. Lithium is not white gold
Says the one with no gold or lithium.
But lithium batteries are a fire hazard, and battery makers are moving away from it. Apart from the fact that hardly anyone with a brain cell wants a battery car.
Plenty of other things use lithium batteries.
Plenty of other uses for lithium, all of them money makers and beneficial to humanity in general.
Just so you know, this is a rehash article for the uninformed dumb money investor types reusing terms from past articles like white gold and adding terms like ‘quiet corner of the South’ (meaning not in NY offices). Canadian startups and junior miner companies have common promotional scripts, including at Thacker Pass, NV for lithium.
I’m told that from NYC they can hear the banjos being picked all the way from Arkansas. If only I could buy some Arkansas swamp land to take advantage of this white-gold rush. Meanwhile… I wonder if there are other similar underground deposits, given that a huge portion of the Mississippi Valley was once a seabed?
You can easily look up maps of the Smackover Formation that spans the AR-LA border around and down to southern MS and AL. It’s quite famous from earlier oil and gas industry drilling days and geologic research. It’s just new to NYC writers slinging terms like white gold and bonanza. Also, the major timber and wood products producers don’t consider it swamp land. It’s timberland until uninformed writers label it something else.
Missing is the normal scaling estimate of this technique to other types of lithium extraction. Or is this premature until funds are received and a commercial plant is operational? Sort of Popular Science….could, maybe, perhaps, some day, “Hey look here!”
It has been in pilot plant mode for nearly 10 years now. I guess they are waiting on DC money to energize the deal while running rehashed “bonanza” articles for other private dumb money.
This is the under-rated comment of the entire post.
Lithium brines are pumped up in Clayton Valley by Albemarl, and they’re not doing so at great profit. Despite that Albemarl has dehydration ponds in the hottest and driest (8″/yr) local in the entire US. Brine in Clayton Valley, NV are dried for four years before further processing. Arkansas sees precipitation of 50″/yr, you’re not going to dehydrate lithium brine in that climate.
It has been said …. the only thing stopping the West from mining and drilling is environmentalists and politicians. The politicians have been bought or compromised and the environmentalists have been brainwashed. Why it’s OK to mine and drill in one country and not another when we all share the same atmosphere is the unanswered question.
Don’t worry. The watermelons will find a way to stop this. Probably there is a subspeices of fungus that is an endangered species that would be hurt by this process.
There is plenty of Chinese money and plenty of watermelons, and they own the EPA and the Federal Judiciary. They will find a way to put a stop to this attempt.
ResearchGate provides a pdf of a 2023 Nature review of lithium production, including Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE).
There are several competing DLE methods. It’ll take a while to shake them out. One method, or another, may work best to deal with the chemistry of a specific brine.They’re all corrosive.
DLE is very promising, but still early.
Sodium, may be the new lithium….and sodium is everywhere. China has the most over built real estate market in the world – even built ghost cities. It is because the CCP ultimately decides all big issues and screws up. Xi Jinping doesn’t know lithium – he’s too busy trying to hang on to power.
The Salton Sea, the Great plains, Pennsylvania and every other place that fracks, seems to be turning to lithium production, including Arkansas.Hard rock mining also has increased as well.
Michaux (GTK Open File Work Report 42/2021) showed that just the first generation of alternate power systems – wind- PV- batteries- would require a billion tons of Li. Even that amount is likely an underestimate. Arkansas’ 5-19 million tons is less than 1% of 1 billion tons.
Global production of Li has more than doubled in the five years since 2019 to just under 250,000 tons, so production needs to increase another 5000 times within 20 years.
How doable is that?
In addition, the 1st generation is overlapped by the second generation in 15-20 years, doubling lithium demand every 20 years or less due to growth in electrical energy demand. That growth is never ending.
This huge demand would, plausibly, hike the price of Lithium. Oddly, the price of Li turned south 3 years ago and has not recovered, as if batteries are NOT the best thing since sliced bread. Governments are going bankrupt over intermittent renewable energy and the associated batteries.The gravy train is ending.
Lithium should be mined, refined and price into rechargeable batteries…for hand held devices and back-up power for PCs and Laptops. Not Automobiles which require thousands of pounds of them (in the case of Semi Trucks) just to remain competitive with traditional ICVs weather Diesel or Gasoline powered.
Oil, Gas and Coal will always be explored, mined, extracted and refined for Petrochemical stocks (oil/gas) and silica-silicon/iron-steel refinement (coal) regardless of weather or not they’re also used for generating electricity.
The byproduct of creating petrochemical stocks from Oil is Gasoline so as long as petrochemicals are needed (lightweight components that make EVs even remotely viable as well as synthetic rubber tires), gasoline will be produced.
“Price” was supposed to be “Processed” not sure what autoreplace was thinking there
So go sit down and starve, the rest of the human race will not miss you while we continue on into the future.
In this process can/are they collecting other useful minerals? Just how much capture is it capable of? Things like this keep up going to have to buy more sunglasses.
Australia, Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, have much bigger lithium reserves than China. They don’t have the processing capacity.