Fracking wastewater, a byproduct of the fracking boom in Pennsylvania, has been found to contain a surprising amount of lithium, a mineral crucial for clean energy. A study from researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory suggests that the wastewater produced by Pennsylvania’s unconventional wells could contain enough lithium to meet 38 to 40 percent of current domestic consumption.
However, there are concerns about the economic feasibility of extracting lithium from wastewater at scale and the potential impacts this processing could have on the environment and public health. The costs of extracting lithium in this way are unknown, and that includes the costs of surmounting potential logistical challenges of processing and transporting wastewater that comes from well pads across hundreds of miles of land.
One Pennsylvania company, Eureka Resources, is already working on lithium extraction from produced water. In 2023, the company announced it had successfully extracted “97 percent pure lithium carbonate” from wastewater and plans to incorporate the process at its three Pennsylvania facilities within the next two years.
Despite the potential benefits, experts warn that extracting lithium doesn’t solve the ongoing problem of what to do with the highly toxic wastewater produced by fracking, which contains salts, metals, and radioactive elements. Therefore, while the discovery of lithium in fracking wastewater is promising, it also raises a host of new questions and challenges that need to be addressed.
Read more: arstechnica.com