The Rio Tinto Group (NYSE: RIO), an Anglo-Australian metals and mining company, has begun its foray into the production of lithium in efforts to become a top domestic supplier of the metal in the US as electric cars become more common and its market burgeons.
The company has been reprocessing waste piles from a 90-year old mining site in Boron in order to make lithium carbonate, which is a key component in rechargeable batteries for electric cars. The company is trying to focus on improving the quality of the metal and increase the scale of its operations.
Currently the only supplier of lithium carbonate in the U.S. is Albemarle Corp.'s Silver Peak operation in Nevada, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
"If the trials continue to prove successful, this has the potential to become America's largest domestic producer of battery-grade lithium -- all without the need for further mining," Bold Baatar, chief executive officer of Rio's energy and minerals division, said in a statement. "The material being used has already been mined, so this will be a low-energy option for the production of lithium," he continued.
Rio Tinto is spending $10 million to build a test plant that will extract the lithium carbonate metal using a heat-and-leaching process involving a kiln heated to 1,740°F (949°C). The plant will only produce about 10 tonnes annually at this point, but if it turns out to be a success, the company will consider spending $50 million to build an even larger, industrial-scale plant to make 5,000 tonnes of lithium annually.
What's more is that Rio has also obtained a $3 million Defense Logistics Agency grant to further efforts into extracting rhenium, a third-group metal used for jet-fighter engines. The company is recovering them in a copper plant at Utah. Additionally, Rio also working on a project to boost American supply of indium, used in touch screens and solar panels.
Note that these metals have applications beyond the world of electric vehicles, used in modern American technology that features in our everyday lives.