Most lithium deposits are found in Australia and South America.
At the moment, Europe is not on the global lithium map. If in 2017 there were about forty important projects or depots and fifteen operating companies, at the moment the production is still almost non-existent and faces the wrath of its population, Serbia has just buried the mega-project of the Australian mining group Rio Tinto which planned to extract enough lithium from the valley It is capable of producing one million cars per year.
However, the main producer of lithium remains Australia with 55,000 tons in 2021, ahead of Chile, 26,000 tons, China, 14,000 tons, Argentina, 6,200 tons, Brazil, 1,500 tons, Zimbabwe, 1,200 tons, Portugal, 900 tons and the United States ( 411t in 2020), according to the United States Institute of Geological Studies, today the top four countries hold 82% of the world’s identified reserves and 95% of mining production.
Currently, rechargeable or high-voltage batteries account for a third of lithium use, which has many other industrial applications, such as heat-resistant glass and ceramics (35%), lubricants (8%), alloy forming in metallurgy (7%) and reconstitution. Air recycling (5%) and the manufacture of rubber and thermoplastics. Also found in chemistry and pharmacology, lithium salts are used in medicine to treat bipolar disorders.
