Lithium is found in a number of different geological deposit types. The most common are pegmatite bodies, associated with granitic intrusive rocks, and continental brines in salt lakes (salars).
Continental lithium brines in salars settings (salt lakes) are found principally in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and China, with lithium carbonate or lithium chloride produced from these projects. Lithium is rarely found in continental oilfields, where the accompanying produced water is enriched in lithium, probably deriving lithium from evaporite sequences in the stratigraphy.
Lithium brine projects can also be subdivided into two broad ‘deposit types’ with different characteristics (Houston et. al., 2011), which consist of:
• Mature salars (those containing extensive thicknesses – up to hundreds of meters - of halite (salt), such as the Salar de Atacama (Chile), and the Livent Hombre Muerto operation (northern Catamarca, Argentina); and
• Immature salars, which are dominated by clastic sediments, with limited thicknesses of halite, such as the Olaroz salar in Jujuy Argentina and the Silver Peak deposit in Nevada, USA, where brine is extracted from porous volcanic ash units.
Immature salars
Immature salars conversely have brine hosted in pore spaces controlled by the porosity and permeability associated with individual layers within the salar sequence. A degree of compaction occurs with increasing depth below surface, but unlike in matur ........
