How spodumene is mined

Spodumene is a lithium rock so tightly bound that it has to be roasted before acid can pry the lithium out.

stations: 3
things downstream: 13

The short version

Spodumene is a lithium mineral so plentiful at Greenbushes in Western Australia that it often makes up half the rock in the lithium zone. Crews drill and blast open pits, grade and stockpile the ore, and feed it to plants that upgrade it by gravity, heavy media, flotation and magnets. The concentrate is later roasted to make the lithium reachable.

Blast the pegmatite pit

Mining targets the fresh, unweathered parts of the pegmatite exposed in open pits, using ordinary drill and blast. At Greenbushes the lithium zone runs over 2 km long.
Grade and stockpile

Broken ore is sorted into stockpiles by grade and mineral makeup, so the plants get a known feed. Waste rock is trucked to set areas on site, shaped and replanted.
Upgrade by density and froth

Plants combine gravity, heavy-media, flotation and magnetic steps to raise the lithium content. Different operating modes give technical and chemical grades. The widely traded concentrate, SC6, holds around 6% lithium oxide. Lithium stays tightly bound in the crystal until a chemical plant roasts it.

around 6% lithium oxide

End of the lineSpodumene Next it goes into lithium carbonate.

Worth repeating

Spodumene concentrate with around 6% lithium oxide is shipped for making lithium-ion battery materials.
The mineral comes in gem varieties as well, the pink to lilac kunzite and the green hiddenite.
Tin mining began at Greenbushes in 1888, nearly a century before its first lithium plant opened in 1983.