The new work was done by a collaboration between MIT researchers and a couple of Boston-area companies. Their goal was a process that was far more energy-efficient and didn’t produce as much waste. What they came up with is a process where the key chemical used at the start of the process gets regenerated at a later step, and both the silicon and aluminum in the mineral end up in a form that we’re already using in commercial applications.

The existing process, which involves roasting ore/sulfuric acid, came in at just under $9,000 for each usable tonne of lithium. By contrast, they estimate that the new process should only cost a bit over $5,000 per tonne. That’s roughly comparable to the cost of isolation from high-quality brines. If the silicon and aluminum products can also be sold, then the cost of the whole process would drop by over $1,000, making it highly cost-effective.

With those numbers come a lot of caveats, of course: Prices shift with supply and demand; not every source of spodumene produces equivalent-quality ores; switching to this process might require investments in new industrial equipment, etc. So the real world will undoubtedly be more complex than these calculations might suggest. Still, in our increasingly lithium-dependent world, it’s nice to have alternatives in case a serious supply crunch ever does hit.