Lithium is the backbone of our modern world.
It powers everything from smartphones and laptops to electric cars and renewable energy storage systems.
But while demand for lithium keeps rising, extracting it from the Earth remains costly, time-consuming, and harmful to the environment.
Traditional methods use extreme heat, strong acids, and produce large amounts of carbon emissions.
Now, researchers at Penn State University have developed a faster, cleaner, and more efficient way to extract lithium from rocks—without using acids or high heat. Their new method works in just minutes and has recently been granted a U.S. patent.
Dr. Mohammad Rezaee, who led the research, explains that while lithium is crucial for clean energy, the way we extract it today is far from environmentally friendly.
The process often involves heating lithium-containing rocks like spodumene to more than 1,100 degrees Celsius and then treating them with sulfuric acid, which creates toxic waste and carbon dioxide. It’s expensive, polluting, and difficult to manage on a large scale.
Rezaee and his team, including PhD students Chandima Hevapathiranage and Shihua Han, found a simpler way. Instead of acid and extreme heat, they use sodium hydroxide—a common ingredient in soap and household cleaners—and water.
When mixed with lithium-containing rocks and heated at much lower temperatures, the reaction creates a compound that dissolves easily in water. In fact, lithium can be leached out in about a minute, without needing any acid at all.
This method not only extracts more than 99% of the available lithium—better than conventional techniques—but also does so with far less energy and waste.
It’s designed to work with existing industrial systems and doesn’t require complex equipment or dangerous chemicals. The team even tested microwave heating, like you’d use in a kitchen, to speed up the process even more.
In addition to spodumene, the method also works on other lithium-rich rocks like lepidolite and clays. It can even extract other valuable elements, including rubidium and cesium, which are used in electronics, satellites, quantum computers, and rocket systems.
As the U.S. and other countries race to secure more lithium for their growing electric and clean energy sectors, this new technology could help reduce dependence on foreign suppliers and limit the environmental toll of mining.
The Penn State team is now working on scaling up the process to make it ready for industrial use—potentially changing how the world sources one of its most important materials.
