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Material World
Mineral · LiAlSi2O6

Spodumene

A lithium aluminium silicate from granite pegmatites — the hard-rock source of lithium, and the one that does not depend on a salt flat.

Ore Gemstone

Spodumene is where lithium comes from when it does not come from brine. Lithium is a small, awkward ion that most rock-forming minerals will not accommodate, so it concentrates into the last fluids to crystallise from a granite — and spodumene is the mineral that results, sometimes in crystals metres long.

The distinction between hard rock and brine is the whole geography of lithium supply. Brine operations evaporate salt-flat water over months and are cheap and slow; spodumene is mined, crushed and roasted, which is faster to bring online and more expensive to run. Which route dominates has flipped more than once as demand has moved.

Processing

Spodumene must be heated to about 1,100 °C before it will give up its lithium. The heating converts the mineral from its natural dense form to a bulkier one, and only the second is attacked by acid — so a step that looks like simple calcining is in fact a structural conversion, and it is the largest energy cost in hard-rock lithium.

The roasted material is leached with sulfuric acid to lithium sulfate and converted onward to the carbonate or hydroxide a battery maker actually buys.

Economic significance

Lithium demand is set almost entirely by batteries, and battery demand has grown faster than either supply route can comfortably follow. Spodumene's advantage is time: a hard-rock mine can be brought into production in a few years where a brine operation takes longer, so spodumene absorbs demand shocks that brine cannot.

Its disadvantage is energy. The roast is unavoidable, and it means hard-rock lithium carries a considerably larger carbon cost per tonne than evaporation in a desert.

Medium confidence Weak evidence

How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.

How this connects

Where a connection has been confirmed by an outside reference, that reference is named beside it.

is an ore of

  • Lithium — element · the principal hard-rock source, against brine — the two routes differ in cost, speed and carbon rather than in product Wikidata

is a component of

  • Pegmatite — rock · an accessory of rare-element pegmatites rather than a defining constituent — where lithium concentrated, and it can dominate a zone entirely

is an alternative to

  • Lepidolite — mineral · as hard-rock lithium ore. Spodumene is richer and the industry standard; lepidolite carries fluorine that complicates the roast and rubidium and caesium that can pay for the trouble

is found at

  • Salar de Atacama — place · not here — the salar is brine, and spodumene is the hard-rock alternative with the opposite environmental profile

has variety

  • Kunzite — mineral variety · coloured pink by manganese — the same mineral that is the principal hard-rock lithium ore

contains

Sources

  • Material World
    Our own writing
  • Wikidata
    Wikimedia Foundation · Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication)
  • Crystallography Open Database
    COD Advisory Board / Vilnius University · CC0 — contributors place data in the public domain

Questions this page answers

Where it comes from, and what it becomes

Follow Spodumene back to what it starts as, and forward into what it becomes. Each step is a documented one — a real route material takes, not a chain of inference.

Downstream — what it becomes

  • Spodumene → is an ore of (the principal hard-rock source, against brine — the two routes differ in cost, speed and carbon rather than in product) → Lithium → is a source for (as lithium carbonate, which is the traded chemical rather than the metal — from Atacama brine or from Australian spodumene) → Lithium iron phosphate → is used in (in more than half of world cell production, and in almost all stationary storage — the cathode chosen where mass does not bind and price and fire risk do) → Lithium-ion cell → is used in (and portable computing came first by two decades) → Electronics manufacture → is associated with (and the supply chain it produced is the deepest and most concentrated in the world economy) → The semiconductor era complete chain
  • Spodumene → is a component of (an accessory of rare-element pegmatites rather than a defining constituent — where lithium concentrated, and it can dominate a zone entirely) → Pegmatite
  • Spodumene → is an ore of (the principal hard-rock source, against brine — the two routes differ in cost, speed and carbon rather than in product) → Lithium → is used in (the ion that shuttles, and the only part of the cell the name mentions) → Lithium-ion cell → is used in (and portable computing came first by two decades) → Electronics manufacture → is associated with (and the supply chain it produced is the deepest and most concentrated in the world economy) → The semiconductor era complete chain
  • Spodumene → is an ore of (the principal hard-rock source, against brine — the two routes differ in cost, speed and carbon rather than in product) → Lithium → is used as (the defining material of the rechargeable cell) → Battery electrodes
  • Spodumene → is an ore of (the principal hard-rock source, against brine — the two routes differ in cost, speed and carbon rather than in product) → Lithium → is produced at (concentrated by solar evaporation over a year or more, which is the cheapest route there is and available in very few places) → Salar de Atacama
  • Spodumene → is an ore of (the principal hard-rock source, against brine — the two routes differ in cost, speed and carbon rather than in product) → Lithium → is used in (the ion that shuttles, and the only part of the cell the name mentions) → Lithium-ion cell → is used in (grid storage and electric vehicles, which is what turned a list of obscure elements into a geopolitical argument) → Energy generation

These are the most distinct paths onward. Spodumene ends up in others besides.