Decarbonising the refining of spodumene to lithium hydroxide: Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy in the calcination process

Over the last decade, China embarked on a bold program to revolutionise its car manufacturing industry, by introducing subsidies to drive the technical innovation in batteries used in electric powered vehicles. This led to the price of lithium chemicals tripling between 2010 and 2018, as the production of these chemicals from brines in South America lacked agility owed to a two-year cycle required for the evaporation of the lithium concentration ponds. The void in the lithium supply was filled by miners from Western Australia, who noted a business opportunity to export concentrates of a hard-rock mineral, called spodumene (α-spodumene), for their conversion to lithium chemicals in Chinese refineries.