Oceanic sources. The projects getting underway are focusing on brine pools like California’s Salton Sea, but sea water sources of lithium in general are basically indefinite, and can work anywhere with a coastline. Other harvested salts may also produce useful byproducts, and you may even be able to run it as part of a general desalination plant for freshwater.
Now, this is interesting!
Seawater contains 230 billion tons of lithium, compared to just 21 million tons in conventional land-based reserves. Lihytech estimates that extracting just 0.1 per cent of all lithium from seawater would be enough to meet humanity’s technology needs.
Source: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/kaust-spinout-will-extract-lithium-from-seawater/
Not to mention there are advances with lithium recycling, both in facilities and new processes to make it more efficient.
