Carbon footprint and water inventory of the production of lithium in the Atacama Salt Flat, Chile

Abstract

The objective of this work is to estimate the carbon footprint and water footprint inventory using primary information of the lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide production of SQM and Albemarle in the Atacama Salt Flat, which represented 30 % of global lithium production in 2020. A contribution of the work is demonstrating that these two operations have the lowest reported GHG global emissions per unit production of lithium carbonate and of lithium hydroxide, and that this is possible due to natural and anthropogenic characteristics. Another contribution is that the natural advantages of the Atacama deposit should remain crucial in this leadership in spite of the introduction of an assortment of technologies in the reduction of GHG emissions in the future. A third contribution is showing that the largest cause of the carbon footprint for lithium carbonate production at the Atacama Salt Flat was soda ash, with 63.1 % of the total.