Grant: Alliance Grants

Lithium is an essential metal for clean energy technologies, especially batteries used in electronics, electric vehicles, and renewable energy storage. As such, demand for lithium is projected to grow exponentially over the next several years. However, traditional lithium mining operations are not expected to be able to fill this demand, and current mining practices are both challenging and environmentally damaging. In response to this, the search for novel and sustainable lithium sources has begun to focus on subsurface waters within the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin and drawn the interest of several junior mining companies. While preliminary work has shown that lithium enrichments occur in subsurface brines in western Canada, lacking is a framework that would allow for the prediction of lithium enrichments, which presents an obstacle to future exploration projects. To address this lack of a predictive framework, this project, in partnership with EMP Metals Corp., will utilize geochemical tracers (stable isotopes, major ion chemistry, rare earth element patterns), in combination with publicly available well data to develop a method for identifying areas where subsurface brines may be enriched in lithium. This will be accomplished by integrating geochemical data, along with geological metadata and utilizing machine learning approaches. While focused on the portion of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin that lies within southern Saskatchewan, results promise to help guide exploration for lithium in subsurface brines throughout western Canada and in other large sedimentary basins.