The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the dangers to our economic and national security of relying too heavily on global supply chains.
The United States is 100 percent dependent on foreign sources for 17 mineral commodities and 50 percent or more import dependent for another 29, including ones essential for military and battery technologies. This puts the U.S. in a precarious situation, depending on China and other foreign nations for the crucial materials such as lithium, cobalt and rare earth metals that help build a more sustainable future.
According to a recent graphic from Standard Lithium if China were to stop selling any of the 18 out of 23 metals the U.S. deems critical to their economy or defense, the U.S. economy would be in serious trouble.
Using existing infrastructure and operational expertise of the largest brine processing facilities in North America, Standard Lithium is leading a new wave of U.S. lithium production. Standard Lithium’s patent-pending direct lithium extraction process is the key to unlocking this strategic domestic critical mineral resource. The direct extraction process, known as “LiSTR” has the potential to vastly reduce the recovery time of extracting lithium from brine from as long as a year for conventional evaporation pond processing to just several hours. The process may also prove to be much more environmentally friendly with a significantly smaller footprint compared to the conventional evaporation pond processes.