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.