While attention is always focused on potassium, magnesium, sodium chloride and sulfates as products that can be found in salt basins, a Tunisian study revealed that one of the basins in southern Tunisia may be rich in the mineral "lithium".
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This lightweight metal, nicknamed "battery gold," is used in the manufacture of batteries for phones, electric cars, and electricity storage systems, making the search for new sources of it a matter that goes beyond scientific discovery to the security of energy supplies.
According to Dr. Hassan Khalisa, the lead researcher in the study, this figure does not mean that Tunisia actually possesses this quantity as a reserve ready for mining. He tells Al Jazeera Net: “What we have reached is an estimate of a potential resource, the possibility of extracting it economically still needs to be verified, which is what we are currently working on in a new study.”
To understand the source of this lithium, Hassan and his colleagues began their study by examining the geological properties of the basin, using previous research in tectonics and volcanology, to put forward a hypothesis based on the fact that the volcanic and sedimentary rocks surrounding the basin contain lithium among their minerals, and when the fluids that move in the interior of the earth, which may be hot due to geothermal heat, interact with the rocks, they help to dissolve some of their components and transport the lithium with them. This is similar to placing a piece of rock containing water-soluble salts in water, then passing water over it repeatedly, so that over time some of those salts will transfer to the water.
Faults, which are breaks in rocks, allow these lithium-bearing fluids to pass through the depths of the earth, and when they reach the salt basin, the accumulation of the element in them, along with other processes such as evaporation, can contribute to the formation of areas where its concentration is high.
The study did indeed detect spatial variations in lithium concentration, with a notable increase in the northwestern sector of the basin.
But Hassan describes this geological explanation as a strong hypothesis that needs further testing and verification, adding that he encourages other research teams to study and verify it more deeply.
Regarding how to determine the concentration of lithium, Hassan explains that the element is present in minute concentrations within a highly saline solution, dominated by sodium, chloride, potassium, magnesium, and sulfate ions. Therefore, determining it was not an easy task, as these components in turn affect the accuracy of the measurements, making reading the lithium signal more complicated.
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