El Litio en Bolivia

No doubt had the President visualizing Dollar '$' signs.

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Bolivia, the landlocked country is surrounded by Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile. It is part of the “Lithium Triangle” with Chile and Argentina, where about 75% of the world’s lithium comes from given its abundance and high quality. Today, Chile is the second largest producer of the main ingredient of lithium-ion batteries after the Australia. Chile produces 70,000 tonnes a year and Argentina 30,000 out of the 230,000- tonne lithium world market.

The Bolivian government claims that it has 70% of the world’s lithium reserves which is around and the most optimistic estimation claims there is 21 million metric tons of lithium in Salar de Uyuni (English: Uyuni Salt Flats). Although, Bolivia has the second largest natural gas reserves in South America after Venezuela and an agreement to sell natural gas to Brazil through 2019.

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Geography of Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flat) :

The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat on earth, it covers an area of 10,582 km² and reaches an altitude of 3653 meters above sea level. Due to its size and remarkable flatness, it is considered as an ideal reference surface for NASA and its satellite-based altimeters.
 

The salt flat is surrounded by the Municipality of Uyuni (Antonio-Quijarro Province), Municipality of Colcha-K and San-Pedro de Quemes (Nor-Lipez Province), Municipalities of Llica and Tahua (Daniel-Campos Province), and to the north the Municipality of Salinas de Garcia-Mendoza (Cabrera Province in the department of Oruro). These six municipalities contain 329 communities of Quechua and Aymara ethnic origins. The livelihoods are mostly concentrated on agriculture, especially quinoa, mining, artisanal salt production and tourism, the latter being, currently, the most important income-generating activity.
 

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Why Bolivian Lithium Suddenly in News?

In 2017, Bolivian President “Morales” started talking about lithium mining that country holds 70% of the mineral used in mobile phones, power tools and electric cars, but has so far done virtually nothing with it. The more than doubling of the lithium carbonate price between 2010 and 2017 year, no doubt had the President visualizing dollar $ signs. The Morales administration doesn’t want Bolivia to be a mere exporter of raw material, but rather wants to transform the country into a hub where the entire chain of activities involving lithium takes place.

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Lithium of Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flat)

In 2008, Morales’ government began the ambitious process of extracting and industrialising evaporite resources in the Uyuni salt flat. Based on a strong nationalist political discourse against foreign companies, the Bolivian Government decided to finance 100% of the two initial phases and representing an investment of US$1 Billion and the state mining company Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) is in charge of the management and operations of three different phases.

1. Research and Pilot
2. Industrial scale extraction or Production of Salt 
3. Industrialization of batteries and Remains

Till the date, Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) has made substantial advancements in building infrastructure. In early December 2018, YLB told that the company will also start building a $96 million plant with the capacity to produce 18,000 tons of lithium carbonate by early 2020.

Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) and Partners :

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Partnership for Salar de Unyuni : A big step was took in December 2018, Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos and Germany’s ACI Systems GmbH (ACI Systems) is a member of the ACI Group based in “Zimmern Ob Rottweil” in southern Germany announced that ACI will work with State owned Bolivian Lithium Deposits (YLB) to install four lithium plants in the Salar de Uyuni. The joint venture aims to build a lithium processing plant at Uyuni with an initial outlay with partnership of nearly amount $1,398 million in partnership with the German company ACI Systems, (YBL, 51% - ACI, 49%). The plant would produce up to 40,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide per year, for 70 years, by the end of 2022.

Perhaps most importantly, ACI Systems has no experience mining lithium, a notoriously difficult mineral to extract and process. The industry is dominated by just four players who own nearly all the mines: Albemarle, SQM, FMC, and the latest, Tianqi Lithium. They have the technology and expertise to mine lithium economically.

Partnership for Salar de Coipasa and Pastos Grandes: Another step was taken in February 2019, Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) and the Chinese company Xinjiang TBEA Group-Baocheng (YBL, 51% - TBEA, 49%)signed an agreement for the construction of the lithium industrialization plants in the salt flats of Coipasa (Oruro) and Pastos Grandes (Potosí) that $2,390 millions in partnership for the both Salt flats.

In Salar de Coipasa, the capacities of the plants proposed by the TBEA company, Potassium Sulphate production 450,000 tons/year, Lithium Hydroxide 60,000 tons/year, Bromine Boric 10,000 tons/year, Boric Acid 60,000 tons/year and Sodium Bromide 10,000 tons/year.

Meanwhile, the Lithium Chloride Plant in the Salar de Pastos Grandes will generate Lithium chloride 60,000 tons/year, Lithium Carbonate 40,000 tons/year and the Metallic Lithium 5,600 tons/year. 

Bolivian Lithium Problem.

“HAVING IT” and the “MINING IT” are two entirely different things: 

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Let’s talk about the Bolivia weather; Bolivia’s salt flats are also subject to seasonal flooding; Uyuni is a huge prehistoric lake on a high-altitude of Andean plateau resulting in a lower evaporation rate that makes it more expensive and difficult to refine or the extraction process much more complicated and costly if the country adopts Chile’s sun-based evaporation pond route.

A major factor affecting capital costs is the net evaporation rate this determines the area of the evaporation ponds necessary to increase the grade of the plant feed. These evaporation ponds can be a major expense. If we compare the Salar de Atacama, Chile has higher evaporation rates than the world’s other salt plains and evaporation takes place all year long. Where, Uyuni’s higher rainfall and cooler climate mean that its evaporation rate is not even half that of Chile’s Salar de Atacama.

Salar de Atacama is ideal for lithium mining because the lithium-containing brine ponds evaporate quickly and the solution is concentrated into lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide used in EV batteries. Bolivia’s rainy season lasts from December to March, converting Uyuni into a lake for parts of the year. Bolivia’s rainfall is about 168mm a year compared to the Atacama’s 15mm

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On the other hand, The Salar de Uyuni has the lowest average grade of Li at 0.028 and has an extremely high ratio of Mg/Li at 19.9. At Chile’s Salar de Atacama the rate is 6:1 and at the Salar de Hombre Muerto in Argentina 1:1.  

Magnesium (Mg) has to be removed by adding slaked lime to the brine. The slaked lime reacts with the magnesium salts and removes them from the water. If the Mg/Li ratio is 1:1 in the original brine, and if slaked lime costs $180/tonne, it costs $180/tonne to produce lithium carbonate. At 20:1 the extra production cost would be $3,600 per tonne. A common industry axiom says that the ratio of Mg to Li in brines must be below the range of 9:1 or 10:1 to be economical. 

Bolivia’s salars are too low in elevation, meaning too much rain, the evaporation rate is too low, and the magnesium to lithium ratios are too high. This makes it extremely challenging for any company to mine lithium at a profit. The costs are simply too high and the grades too low. If somebody had the technology to make it work in Bolivia, it would have happened by now. Bolivia’s vast lithium reserves are no secret.

Article by Sandeep Wasnik | Latin America & the Caribbean Market Expert

Contact : latinosbiz@gmail.com

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