Abstract
The demand for “green” metals such as lithium is increasing as the world works to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. More than half of the world’s lithium resources are contained in lithium-brine deposits, including the salt flats, or “salars”, of the Andean region of South America, also known as the Lithium Triangle. The genesis of lithium-brine deposits is largely driven by the leaching of lithium from source rocks in watersheds, transport via groundwater systems to salars, and evaporative concentration in salars. The goal of this research is to create a consistent and seamless methodology for tracking lithium mass from its source in the watershed to its greatest concentration in the nucleus. The area of interest is in and around Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. We explore how Li-brine deposits form, where the water and solute come from, how the brines are formed, and how abstraction affects the mass balance inside the salar. To support the entire system, open-source Earth observation (EO) data are analysed. We found that by constructing a flexible and repeatable workflow, the question of how lithium reaches the Salar de Uyuni can be addressed. The work demonstrated the importance of groundwater flow to the river network and highlighted the need for flow data for the main river supplying the salar with both water inflow and lithium mass.
Highlights
Net-zero policies necessitate a shift to cleaner transportation and renewable energy storage, but energy and mineral supply chains face numerous challenges
The World Bank predicts that more than 3 billion tonnes of minerals and metals will be required to deploy solar, wind, and geothermal power, as well as energy storage, if our planet is to stay within the COP21 Paris
The ternary plot created is through the open source library “plotly” in python. This is an interactive tool, which allows hovering over the a point of interest on the graph and which brings to the final enhanced geological map that covers the entire study area and whose attributes split mapped ignimbrites according to their relative age and subdivides superficial geology based on parent material and likely lithium concentrations
Summary
Net-zero policies necessitate a shift to cleaner transportation and renewable energy storage, but energy and mineral supply chains face numerous challenges. The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia (Figure 1) is being used as a study area for developing a repeatable and seamless workflow for tracking lithium from its source in the watershed to the salar nucleus at its maximum concentration. There need to be sediments to fill these basins: thick sand and gravels provide both a host to the brines and contribute to their formation These conditions need to persist for sufficient time (thousands to millions of years) to allow the accumulation and concentrate the brines, and this is very much the case given that in Bolivia there are more than 40 salars. (b) TIR which brings to the final enhanced geological map that covers the entire study area and whose attributes split mapped ignimbrites according to their relative age and subdivides superficial geology based on parent material and likely lithium concentrations.
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