Life cycle environmental impacts of current and future battery-grade lithium supply from brine and spodumene

Review article, 2022

Life cycle assessment studies of large-scale lithium-ion battery (LIB) production reveal a shift-of-burden to the upstream phase of cell production. Thus, it is important to understand how environmental impacts differ based on the source and grade of extracted metals. As lithium is highly relevant to several current and next-generation cell chemistries, we reviewed the effect of varying grades in different sources of lithium (brine and spodumene) worldwide. The review covered the Ecoinvent database, scientific literature, and technical reports of several upcoming production facilities. The results showed that lower-grade lithium brines have higher environmental impacts compared to higher-grade brines. However, spodumene-based production did not show such a trend, due to different technical process designs of the facilities reviewed. Water use impacts are higher in lower-grade sources and are expected to increase with decreasing lithium concentration. This could specifically be an issue in brine-based production, where brine is extracted from already water scarce regions and evaporated, thus increasing the risk of freshwater availability. However, these aspects of water use are not addressed in existing life cycle impact assessment methods. In the context of large-scale LIB cell production, the reviewed lithium hydroxide production routes account for 5–15% of the climate change impacts.