A research team will present the results of their recent study, directly to the General Assembly of European Geosciences Union (EGU) of 2024. The peculiarity? We found something unthinkable inside the famous “fool’s gold”.
After seeing the UK’s largest gold nugget, pyrite from sites in the US was recently discovered contains a surprising amount of the chemical element lithium (Li), that is, something the world desperately needs in this historical moment.
The association of pyrite with lithium”It’s unheard of. I’m trying to figure out how lithium and pyrite might be associated with each other“Shailee Bhattacharya, sediment and geochemist, said in a statement doctoral student who works with Professor Shikha Sharma in the IsoBioGeM laboratory at West Virginia University.
Specifically, the study focused on 15 sedimentary rock samples Middle Devonian from the Appalachian Basin in the United States. The analyzes are definitely clear and revealed that there was one surprising amount of lithium in pyrite minerals found in shale (a metamorphic rock). A totally unexpected result.
All this could represent great news for the battery revolution, but the team itself urges not to get too excited for now. That’s because we don’t yet know whether the results are site-specific, meaning pyrite found in other locations may not contain as much lithium as the samples tested in this study.
“We currently produce around 100,000 tonnes of lithium every year. By 2030, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that we will need 2.5 to 5 times as much: from 240,000 to 450,000 tons“explained Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist at the University of Oxford.
It is therefore not a disgusting mass of flesh this time, but an equally so interesting find which could improve current lithium supplies.
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