The United Kingdom is moving ahead with working on building a lithium refinery, a first of its kind in Europe and also the largest to produce the popular material.
Given its importance in manufacturing electric vehicle (EV) batteries, Lithium has taken the centre stage when it comes to renewable energy and has been sought after hugely in recent years.
By 2030, up to 60 per cent of new car sales will use lithium-ion batteries. Currently, the battery of Tesla’s Model S uses around 12 kg of lithium.
However, the surge in the production of electric vehicles has made manufacturers dependent on East Asia, particularly China, for the ore metal, where 89% of the world’s lithium is currently refined.
In an effort to provide the UK and Europe’s automakers a much-needed boost, the UK government has recently granted the go-ahead to a UK-based firm, Green Lithium, for the development of a refinery in Teesside, England.
“It’s the growth in battery materials that’s required to power the electric revolution, the fact that we need electric vehicles, the fact that we need grid storage and domestic storage is producing a huge demand in battery chemicals in Europe and we think by 2030 we’re going to need about 800,000 tonnes per annum,” said Sean Sargent, Green Lithium’s CEO.
According to the business, the factory will start operating in 2027 and have an annual production capacity of 50,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium compounds, or enough lithium to supply batteries for one million EV car batteries.
In order to eventually extract the lithium and convert it to a chemical that can be utilised in batteries, the Teesside refinery will process spodumene, a hard rock material imported from Western Australia.
However, mining for lithium is known to contaminate the air and the land.
According to Green Lithium, it intends to use low-energy processes, renewable electricity, hydrogen gas, and carbon capture technologies to reduce the carbon footprint of lithium refining by 80% compared to conventional refineries.
Sargent also said, “So the small price you pay for shipping the material to the UK is completely outweighed by the benefits of the decarbonised process we use in the UK. So, straight away we start with a huge dividend in carbon reduction, but we’re also producing our chemicals sustainably.”
