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Bolivia seeks to exploit its huge lithium deposits

A dozen 600-liter barrels full of metal brine sit on a warehouse floor ready to be shipped abroad for analysis, the first step in Bolivia’s quest to exploit vast lithium deposits in the Uyuni salt flats.

Bolivia has half of the world’s known reserves of lithium — a key mineral used especially in rechargeable batteries, as well as everything from cell phones and laptops to electric cars.

With demand for lithium expected to boom in coming years, Bolivia — one of the poorest countries in South America — is sitting on something potentially more valuable than a gold mine.

The lithium is found in Uyuni, the largest salt flats in the world.

Bolivian officials say there are 100 million tonnes of lithium under this desolate, 10,000km2 tourist attraction near the border with Chile, 3,650m above sea level.

The state-run Bolivian Mining Corp (Comibol) is sending the samples to the French Bollore Group, Japan’s Sumitomo Corp and South Korea’s Korea Resource Corp to study the mineral composition of the salt flats.

Each barrel that leaves Uyuni contains lithium, along with potassium chloride, potassium sulphate, boric acid and magensium chloride, in different proportions that, in the initial stage, are obtained via evaporation.

Under the tough salty surface there is an ocean of brine where the lithium is found.

Miners reach the briny layer by drilling a hole and sinking a tube — with an opening 15cm in diameter — 5m to 200m below the salty surface.

Officials say the Uyuni’s natural beauty will not be harmed by the drilling because the holes are covered up once the brine is removed, heavy machinery flattens the site and rain eventually erases all traces of human activity.

Marcelo Castro, director of the state-run Lithium Pilot Plant, located on the southern edge of the salt flats, estimates there are a good 100 million tonnes of lithium at the site.

Lithium extraction “is not only important for Bolivia because of the economic resources it will generate, but for the whole world, because being a source of clean energy it will help mitigate global warming,” Castro said.

He will be in charge of getting the pilot plant, currently being built at a cost of US$6 million, up and running. Next year it is expected to produce some 40 tonnes a month of lithium carbonate, a compound used in medicine, the generation of energy, glass and construction materials.

The government plans to sink US$300 million to US$400 million into the project’s initial phase. Castro said that cost would be covered “100 percent” by the government.

The second phase involving the production of lithium metal will require an US$800 million investment which it is expected the Japanese, Korean and French concerns will back through investment and cooperation agreements.

The final phase of the project calls for manufacturing lithium batteries.
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