Most of the lithium in your phone, laptop, or electric vehicle comes from two types of deposits: underground brine pools in South America and hard-rock mines in Australia. These two sources account for the vast majority of global supply, though new projects in the United States and other countries are working to change that balance. Getting lithium out of the ground is only the first step. It then travels through a refining pipeline heavily concentrated in China before it ends up in a battery cell.
Brine Pools: South America’s Lithium Triangle
Beneath the salt flats of Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia sits a massive concentration of lithium dissolved in underground saltwater. This region, sometimes called the “Lithium Triangle,” holds some of the largest known reserves on the planet. To extract lithium here, operators pump the brine into large evaporation ponds and let the sun do the work over 12 to 18 months. As the water evaporates, lithium concentrations rise until the mineral can be chemically separated.
The process is relatively cheap, but it consumes enormous volumes of brine. At two operations in Argentina’s salt flats, researchers found that producing a single metric ton of battery-grade lithium carbonate required between 320,000 and 537,000 liters of brine. In the arid regions where these deposits exist, that level of extraction raises serious concerns about groundwater depletion and the impact on local communities and ecosystems that depend on limited water supplies.
Hard-Rock Mining: Australia Leads
Australia is the world’s largest lithium producer by volume, and nearly all of it comes from mining a mineral called spodumene. This is traditional open-pit mining: blasting rock, crushing it, and running it through a processing plant to produce a concentrate. That concentrate is then shipped overseas for further refining into battery-grade chemicals.
Hard-rock mining is faster to ramp up than brine evaporation and doesn’t depend on desert climate conditions. But it’s more energy-intensive and expensive per ton. Mines in Western Australia have scaled up dramatically over the past decade to meet surging demand from battery manufacturers, particularly in China.
New Sources in the United States
The U.S. has historically produced very little lithium, but that’s changing. The Thacker Pass project in northern Nevada sits on one of the largest lithium deposits in the country. Covering nine square miles of public land, the mine received its air, water, and mining permits from the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection in early 2022, clearing the way for construction. Unlike brine or spodumene operations, Thacker Pass will extract lithium from clay, using a different chemical process.
There’s also growing interest in extracting lithium from geothermal brines in California’s Salton Sea region, where hot, lithium-rich fluid is already being pumped to the surface for energy production. These domestic projects are part of a broader push to reduce reliance on foreign supply chains for critical battery materials.
Direct Lithium Extraction: A Faster Alternative
Traditional brine evaporation is slow and wastes a lot of water. A newer approach called direct lithium extraction, or DLE, uses chemical or mechanical processes to pull lithium directly from brine in hours rather than months. Two of the first commercial-scale DLE plants in the Western Hemisphere are now coming online: one operated by a joint venture between Eramet and Tsingshan Holding Group at 4,000 meters elevation in Argentina’s Salta Province, and another in Utah, where US Magnesium is producing lithium carbonate from briny wastewater left over from its magnesium operations.
Several firms in China already use variations of DLE, though typically with extra preprocessing steps to remove impurities first. The only company running a fully commercial DLE process outside China before these new plants was Arcadium Lithium, which has operated in Argentina for decades. The next generation of DLE technology aims to cut costs further and reduce freshwater consumption, which could make previously uneconomical deposits viable.
From Raw Lithium to Battery-Ready Chemicals
Raw lithium ore or brine concentrate can’t go directly into a battery. It needs to be refined into one of two chemical forms. Lithium carbonate is the simpler, cheaper product and is primarily used in lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, the type found in many smaller EVs, consumer electronics, and energy storage systems. Lithium hydroxide requires more processing but is necessary for the high-nickel battery chemistries (NMC and NCA) used in longer-range electric vehicles and premium electronics.
This refining step is where the supply chain narrows dramatically. In 2022, Chinese companies accounted for over two-thirds of the world’s lithium processing capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That means even lithium mined in Australia or extracted from South American brines typically passes through Chinese refineries before it becomes part of a battery. This concentration of processing power is a major reason governments in the U.S. and Europe are investing in domestic refining capacity.
How Much Lithium the World Needs
Global lithium demand is climbing steeply. The International Energy Agency projects total demand will reach 531,000 metric tons by 2030 under its Announced Pledges Scenario, which models what happens if governments follow through on their stated climate and energy commitments. That’s a dramatic increase from current levels, driven almost entirely by electric vehicle production and grid-scale energy storage.
Meeting that demand will require both expanding existing mines and brine operations and bringing entirely new sources online. Every major lithium-producing country is racing to approve and build new projects, while automakers are signing long-term supply agreements directly with mining companies to lock in future access.
Recycling as a Future Supply Source
Recycling old batteries could eventually supplement mined lithium, but it’s not a meaningful source yet. Today, recycled lithium contributes roughly 0.5 to 1% of total battery production. Projections suggest that figure could reach about 14% globally by 2050, with wide uncertainty depending on how fast collection and recycling infrastructure scales up.
Europe is pushing harder than most. The EU’s updated battery regulation requires that lithium-ion batteries contain at least 6% recycled lithium by 2031 and 12% by 2036. Under optimistic scenarios, recycling could supply around 40% of Europe’s battery lithium needs by 2050. But globally, recycling will remain a supplement to mining, not a replacement, for decades. The simple reason: most EV batteries sold today won’t reach end-of-life for 10 to 15 years, so the pool of batteries available for recycling is still small relative to the pace of new demand.