Green Irony: Massive US Lithium Source Found - In Fracking Wastewater

Yea so Pennsylvania may very well be poised to become a major domestic source of lithium. Some coat in a lab done looked into some microscopes and machines and stuff and found a bunch of lithium floating around in high density in the fracking wastewater left behind after these shale drilling/mining operations for oil. Sounds pretty good once leadership changes at the Federal level maybe this new revenue stream could help bring Urban PA from the brink of disaster.

The global, government-coerced transition into "green energy" has geologists scouring the Earth for new sources of lithium -- the element that's required for batteries, like those used in electric vehicles.

Now, in a cosmic practical joke on environmentalists, researchers say they've found a lithium mother lode -- in Pennsylvania fracking wastewater.

It turns out that the Marcellus Shale -- a long swath of sedimentary rock in the northeastern United States that holds huge amounts of frackable gas -- holds huge quantities of lithium too. Justin Mackey and other researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pennsylvania were pleasantly surprise when they studied the contents of wastewater dredged up in the fracking process at 515 sites in the Keystone State, reports Science Alert.

Long before the frackers showed up, deep groundwater has been dissolving the lithium in the Marcellus Shale for eons. "It's been dissolving rocks for hundreds of millions of years—essentially, the water has been mining the subsurface," Mackey told the University of Pittsburgh's Brandie Jefferson.

When they analyzed the wastewater data, they were stunned by the volume of lithium. The shale "has the capacity to provide significant lithium yields for the foreseeable future" he says. Their detailed findings were published in Scientific Reports.

It's unclear if other fracking hotspots have abundant lithium too. However, even using conservative estimates of how much can be recovered from the wastewater suggests that Pennsylvania alone could cover more than 30% of America's 2024 demand.

It will probably be about five years before any of the first jobs can be generated from this new development, and that will probably just be impact studies and more testing. But I think ten years time there will have been established and located new companies in these areas to serve the market and cater to the industry. A possible new STEM job to tell our kids about guys.

wow, a potential massive economic and industrial boon for the old mining and oil states in new technology, and nobody is interested?? Could I get a license to extract and refine this lithium for sale?? I should go research commerce and mining laws in PA or West Virginia and find out what I can find out.