How a Quebec Lithium Mine May Help Make Electric Cars Affordable
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/business/electric-vehicles-lithium-quebec.html
About 350 miles northwest of Montreal, amid a vast pine forest, is a
deep mining pit with walls of mottled rock. The pit has changed hands
repeatedly and been mired in bankruptcy, but now it could help determine
the future of electric vehicles.
...
Dozens of lithium mines are in various stages of development in Canada
and the United States. Canada has made it a mission to become a major
source of raw materials and components for electric vehicles.
...
After the price of lithium fell by half from 2017 to 2020, the mine’s
previous owner, the Chinese battery maker CATL, shut down operations
...
The Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed in August, has
raised the stakes for the auto industry. To qualify for several
incentives and subsidies in the law, which go to car buyers and
automakers and are worth a total of $10,000 or more per electric
vehicle, battery makers must use raw materials from North America or a
country with which the United States has a trade agreement.
...
One of the first things that Sayona [new mine owner] had to do when it
took over the La Corne mine was pump out water that had filled the pit,
exposing terraced walls of dark and pale stone from previous
excavations. Lighter rock contains lithium.
After being blasted loose and crushed, the rock is processed in several
stages to remove waste material. A short drive from the mine, inside a
large building with walls of corrugated blue metal, a laser scanner uses
jets of compressed air to separate light-colored lithium ore. The ore is
then refined in vats filled with detergent and water, where the lithium
floats to the surface and is skimmed away.
The end product looks like fine white sand but it is still only about 6
percent lithium. The rest includes aluminum, silicon and other
substances. The material is sent to refineries, most of them in China,
to be further purified.
...
“The productivity will be a lot better because we are correcting
everything,” Mr. Desrosiers said. In a few years, the company plans to
upgrade the facility to produce lithium carbonate, which contains a much
higher concentration of lithium than the raw metal extracted from the
ground.
The operation will get its electricity from Quebec’s abundant hydropower
plants, and will use only recycled water in the separation process, Mr.
Desrosiers said. Still, environmental activists are watching the project
warily.
...
Most people support the lithium mine, but a significant minority oppose
it, Mr. D’Astous said. Opponents fear that another lithium mine being
developed by Sayona in nearby La Motte, Quebec, could contaminate an
underground river.
----------
This article makes Sayona look pretty angelic. If they can succeed in
producing lithium without any significant CO2 output, that might
drastically improve the advantage of EVs, where the current construction
of EVs produces considerably more greenhouse gases than for construction
of ICEs.
Peri
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