battery_metal · primary
Battery metal at the centre of the EV transition. Production has tripled since 2018 Australian spodumene + South American brine dominate. US output is climbing (Silver Peak NV; Thacker Pass under construction) but remains <2% of global supply.
At a glance
Price · 2025
9,000dollars per metric ton
USGS MCS (Price, annual average-real, ba)
Price trend
-24% 1Y
-6%/yr · 4Y CAGR
US net import reliance · 2025
>50
Production HHI
0.45
Highly concentrated (>0.25)
From ore to use
lifecycle flow
34.1Mt
Chile leads · 27% share
Provenance
6.5Mt
Australia top · 2024
1.8Kt
net importer · 2025
-
-
Process engineering
2 PROMMIS flowsheets
PROMMIS · diafiltration
Open workbench →Recover Li selectively from a Li/Co mixture via a single two-salt membrane module. Models permeate-side Li transport + retentate Co retention - the canonical operation in spent-EV-battery recycling.
commodity: lithium · suggested axis: feed_flow_volume · y: li_co_selectivity
PROMMIS · membrane_cascade
Open workbench →Multi-stage Li/Co diafiltration cascade with precipitators, sized by a total-annualized-cost minimization subject to a Li recovery floor. Use when the question is about cascade economics, not a single module's split.
commodity: lithium · suggested axis: lithium_recovery_target · y: total_annualized_cost
Coverage
14 sources · click to verify
