Life Cycle Assessment and Techno-Economic Assessment of Lithium Recovery from Geothermal Brine
Open accessAbstract
Lithium-ion batteries (LIB) play an essential role in the electrification of the transportation sector, and battery demand for lithium compounds will see a significant increase in the coming decades. This has raised concerns on the supply of lithium, and as a result, technologies are being developed to process unconventional lithium sources. One promising technology is to extract lithium from geothermal brine using lithium-aluminum-layered double hydroxide chloride (LDH) sorbent and forward osmosis. A combined life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic assessment (TEA) is conducted to evaluate the environmental and economic performance of this technology. It is assumed that the lithium extraction unit is an add-on to a 50 MW geothermal power plant located in California. The analysis is based on lab-scale experimental data and stoichiometry while considering the economy of scale for an industrial system. LCA results suggest that, compared with conventional LiOH and Li 2 CO 3 production pathways, the new technology achieves 1–95% reduction in environmental impacts. Even higher reduction can be achieved for LiOH produced via electrolysis. This add-on unit for lithium extraction could achieve a payback period of less than 1 year and reach net present values of $454M and $315M and internal rates of return of 792 and 1130% for LiOH and Li 2 CO 3 production pathways, respectively. The favorable environmental and economic performance suggests that LDH sorption coupled with forward osmosis has great potential to enable the domestic production of battery lithium compounds and that further development should be carried out.
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Huang et al. do not report any heat demand, which contrasts with our results because volume reduction processes such as mechanical evaporator require heat.
“Additionally, the authors do not report any heat demand which stands in contrast to our results as volume reduction processes, such as the mechanical evaporator, require heat.83”
From Current and Future Impacts of Lithium Carbonate from Brines: A Global Regionalized Life Cycle Assessment Model (2025) · cites this paper as Huang et al.82
Huang et al. only assess the DLE process without any pretreatment of geothermal brine at Salton Sea, leading to substantially lower resource demand (power use 1.18 kWh/kg Li2CO3 vs our 14 kWh/kg Li2CO3).
“Huang et al.82 only assess the DLE process without any pretreatment of the geothermal brine at Salton Sea, leading to a substantial lower resource demand compared to our obtained one (e.g., power use: 1.18 kW h/kg Li2CO3 compared to 14 kW h/kg Li2CO3).”
From Current and Future Impacts of Lithium Carbonate from Brines: A Global Regionalized Life Cycle Assessment Model (2025) · cites this paper as Huang et al.82
Huang et al. underestimated climate change impacts (2.1 kg CO2eq/kg Li2CO3) due to missing pretreatment processes, although they are described in the literature.
“Huang et al.82 underestimated climate change impacts (2.1 kg of CO2 eq/kg Li2CO3) due to missing pretreatment processes, although they are described in the literature.15,91”
From Current and Future Impacts of Lithium Carbonate from Brines: A Global Regionalized Life Cycle Assessment Model (2025) · cites this paper as Huang et al.82
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Recovery of lithium from Uyuni salar brine
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“Geothermal DLE has been under development in Germany's Upper Rhine Graben (Grant, 2019; Kölbel et al., 2023; Sanjuan et al., 2022; Schenker et al., 2024; Weinand et al., 2023), England's Cornwall county (Bridge & Faigen, 2023) and California's Salton Sea in Imperial Valley (Huang et al., 2021; Naimark, 2023; Parantham…”
Is lithium from geothermal brines the sustainable solution for Li-ion batteries?
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Schenker, V., & Pfister, S. (2025) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/acs.est.4c12619 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
- Authors
- Huang, T.-Y., Pérez-Cardona, J. R., Zhao, F., Sutherland, J. W., & Paranthaman, M. P.
- Affiliations
- Purdue University West Lafayette (US)
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US)
- Corresponding author
- Zhao, Fu
- Venue
- ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2021-05-05
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 19
- Pages
- 6551-6560
- ISSN
- 2168-0485 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3159491435
- Cited by
- 104
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 34 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 8
- FWCI
- 5.13
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.osti.gov
- Licence
- Locations
- ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (publishedVersion)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Extraction and Separation Processes
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Environmental Impact and Sustainability
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Photovoltaic Systems and Sustainability
- Keywords
- lithium recovery, geothermal brine, lithium aluminum layered double hydroxide, forward osmosis, lithium hydroxide, lithium carbonate, lithium-ion batteries, life cycle assessment, techno-economic analysis, lithium supply, environmental impact, payback period
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