Lithium expert offers background and insight into lithium extraction

Lithium continues to be a hot topic around the Ark-La-Tex region as new players emerge in the market for a potential boon including “big oil”. Up until April of 2023, none of the Cass County papers had ever done a story on lithium. Most in the area were caught by surprise when businesses began to visit property owners in hopes of securing mineral rights. Also in March, Standard Lithium announced that wells drilled in Cass County showed some of the highest concentrations of lithium in the world. While the world continues to change in its quest for “clean energy”, there has been one person who has roots in Cass County and has been here in the region working with Lithium since the 1980s, John Burba.

According to his bio, Dr. John Burba is a physical chemist and a world-renowned pioneer in lithium and other mineral extraction technologies.

His more than 40-year career features a number of lithium brine projects in North and South America, notably with Dow Chemical Co., FMC Corp., and Chemtura Corp.

He is known as the Godfather of Lithium. Burba is the founder and Chief Technology Officer for International Battery Metals’ (IBAT).

The quest for lithium that involved Burba began in the early to mid-1980s when Dow Chemical sent Burba and a team to the Arkansas region to figure out a way to pull Lithium out of the water resources. At that time Dow had a fixation with lithium, says Burba, “They really believed it was going to be a big deal.”

“So, I worked there for, we worked on that project for about, six years, and we built a power plant in Magnolia, Arkansas, and we extracted lithium from Smack Over brine and, in 1984 or 1985, in that timeframe. And so we’ve been officially able to put lithium out.

The company couldn’t decide if they wanted to make a commercial because lithium had a very small production volume globally, and the prices were not real high. And then they ended up selling that brine field to Albemarle and Petra. And so that ended that activity.”

Burba who graduated with his PhD in physical chemistry also participated in other lithium activities. After doing other work for Dow, he ended up going to work for FMC Corporation. FMC had purchased a company called Lithium Corporation of America, which engaged in Hard Rock Spodumene extraction which is a classic mining for Lithium procedure. Which is different than what he does currently.

Their mine was running out, so they bought a Salar in Argentina, but they were having a lot of trouble getting lithium out of the brine. Burba had already come up with a solution before he worked for FMC. Burba and a friend of his invented a new absorbent material which he owned the patent on. “They asked me if we could make that work. It did, so we went on to a crash program and demonstrated that the adsorbent would with that brine.” Burba went on to design the lithium plant, which started in 1998.

“That was literally the first commercial extraction plant. Later, they added a pond to try to increase the concentration of lithium so that they could get a higher capacity for the plant. But basically, that was the very first ever. And, in 1998, I worked for FMC for a while longer.” However, Burma says, I got interested in Rare Earth and went off and did that for a while, and then I retired.”

His retirement was short-lived, and we will get to the rest of his background next week in part two of his story. However, since Lithium news seems to be moving at lightning speed in this region the Journal Sun wanted to lean on Burba for clarification regarding extraction technology, development, economic impact and the ecological impact in our area.

Here are some of the questions we asked John Burba: Journal-Sun: People hear a lot of things about the ecological impact of mining Lithium. If you had to speculate about your extraction method and others coming to the marketplace in this area what kind of impact on our environment do you see?

Burba: Solar Evaporation, Hard Rock (Spodumene) mining and Clay Mining come with significant environmental consequences. That is the primary reason that we have focused on direct lithium extraction from brine resources. Our technology does not utilize chemicals in the extraction process. This is a huge advantage because we can recycle approximately 98% of our process water, minimizing water draw from aquafers.

Traditional extraction processes utilize huge quantities of fresh water, acid and base. The byproduct of these operations is salt water, which is very detrimental to the environment and freshwater aquafers. This approach generates long-term serious environmental problems Our process is very different. We can operate with essentially any brine, as long as the lithium concentration is economical. Typically, we prefer brines with lithium concentrations that are greater than about 150 ppm lithium. Fortunately, there are numerous brines that contain much higher concentrations of lithium. The Smackover, for instance, ranges from about 250 ppm to 750 ppm. Chilean brines can have lithium concentrations of 3,000 ppm.

Argentine brines are similar to the Smackover.

Journal-Sun: In the extraction method many think of it in the same vain as fracking. Based on our earlier conversation that’s not the case, is it more like extracting crude oil? Also, what goes back into the ground during the process?

Burba: You are basically correct. We draw the brine from the formation, extract the lithium, and return the lithium-depleted brine to the brine formation. No chemicals are added. As stated above, we draw minimal water from the resource, due to our ability to recycle about 98% of the water. We avoid the increasing produced water that is common with fracking.

Journal-Sun: If you had to speculate on the economic impact on Cass County and Northeast Texas what would you say?

In many ways, lithium operations in Northeast Texas will be like Oil and Gas. Note that the lithium extraction industry in the US is just starting. Thus, we could compare it to the early days of oil and gas. I believe that there is potential for job growth. Until we see multiple projects, it will be difficult to predict future economic impact. However, I personally believe that it can be significant.

Journal-Sun: In your opinion, if you were to speculate how long it will take to see lithium being extracted in our area what would you say?

Burba: Of course, global economics will impact any speculation. However, this could happen within the next three to five years.

Stay tuned for John Burba pt 2 in next week’s paper.