Current Affairs
Daily Bits

Nigeria’s latest lithium find

  • Posted By
    10Pointer
  • Categories
    Geography
  • Published
    28th Jun, 2022

Context

The recent discovery of ‘high-grade’ lithium in Nigeria has been attracting foreign investors since then.

What is Lithium?

  • Lithium is a metallic mineral in very high demand by manufacturing industries. 
  • This highly reactive metal is used for making energy-dense rechargeable batteries for electronics, such as laptops, cell phones, electric vehicles, and grid storage.
  • Lithium and most lithium minerals are mined along with other high-value metallic minerals such as tin, niobium-tantalum (columbite-tantalite) and uranium (in pyrochlore).

What has been found in Nigeria?

  • The Geological Agency described the lithium as high grade because what’s been found has between 1-13 per cent oxide content. 
  • Normally exploration begins at levels as low as 0.4 percent.

What is Grade?

  • Grade (in percent) is a measure of concentration of the lithium in the minerals and or rocks that contain it. 
  • Therefore, the higher the grade the more the economic viability. 
  • Higher grades are very rare for metals like lithium.

Lithium mining around the globe

  • Top mining countries: Three countries, Australia (40,000 tonnes), Chile (20,600 tonnes) and China (14,000 tonnes) mine about 86 per cent of the world’s lithium. 
    • Others are Argentina (6,200 tonnes), Brazil (1,900 tonnes), Zimbabwe (1,200 tonnes), USA (900 tonnes) and Portugal (900 tonnes).

  • Importer: The largest importers of lithium are South Korea, China, Japan, US and Belgium.
  • India: India currently imports lithium for its needs with a tiny 1600 tonne reserve which was found last year in Mandya, Karnataka.

Lithium and most lithium minerals are mined along with other high-value metallic minerals such as tin, niobium-tantalum (columbite-tantalite) and uranium (in pyrochlore).

Lithium-ion batteries

  • Lithium-ion batteries are used in mobile phones, computers, electronics, energy storage systems and electric vehicles. 
  • They are likely to dominate the lithium market over the next decades.
  • However, there are many different types of lithium-ion battery for different applications.

Different type of batteries

Lithium-ion batteries are generally more expensive but have better performance and are becoming the preferred technology. The different types are:

  • Lithium-cobalt oxide battery. It is used in consumer electronics and is finding application in electric vehicles. It is relatively cheap.
  • Lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt is a newer, higher performing range of battery chemistry. It is mainly developed for the electronic vehicle market but is finding a wider use because of its increasing cost effectiveness.
  • Lithium iron phosphate, the safest technology with relatively high performance but relatively expensive. It is very popular in China but is likely to become overtaken by Lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt over the longer term; and
  • Lithium-nickel-cobalt-aluminium oxide developed to reduce cobalt consumption and is known as a solid performer and of reasonable cost. It is also becoming popular outside China.

Verifying, please be patient.

X