Here's Where the Juice That Powers Batteries Comes From

[Music] Chile is one of the world's leading producers of lithium the stuff that goes into all of our smartphone laptop and electric car batteries but to see how lithium is pulled from the earth I went to visit the operations of the mining giants sq.m hello Ashley how you doing finally here my guide through the mines is Alejandro butch err he's a cheerful engineer who has spent years working in the great void when I think of something like a lithium-ion battery in a laptop or even a Tesla with thousands of batteries it's what like a spoonful of lithium batteries you would say no in a night pad or in a cell phone you can have something like a spoonful in a car you could have maybe 10 to 15 kilos over of Lee tune it's the nearby Andes Mountains that make these mines possible over millions of years minerals from the mountain is leached into the ground then they collect together and form huge soft beds rich in lithium sulfate potassium and boron companies like sqm PUC water up through the beds and store the mineral rich liquid in large ponds from there it's up to the Sun to do its thing and evaporate away the water leaving the minerals and salt behind and nowhere evaporates better than Chile now we are heading for the first part of the pond operation there's a lot of puns those are pretty this is the first point you can see the salts forming in the surface you get salt parking spaces [Laughter] that's gonna be crazy because you already have the harsh heat and cold and then you have all this salt just pick up track suffer a lot but the other equipment we made them from a special steel that really works good here and now we're moving to the little ponds that are only two of the 44 million square meters that we have here this point we made it so we can experience what is the little brine when we have it in the big pond sweet we cannot sample so we made this little pump what exactly is this this is my nation boy magnesium chloride it's a magnesium that we need to get rid of for being able to produce the lesion in the plants okay we will only send up the track the liquid just the liquid just the liquid okay so this is lithium what are the odds that some part of this is in my smartphone I couldn't guarantee it but it's pretty sure that almost hundred percent sure that part of your smartphone went through this pond at some point that's fast at some point this is smart phone smart phone juice you guys must be excited that Tesla's are selling well and that everybody is getting into your cars now it's very interesting but it it puts a lot fresher on us so we will more than double our capacity probably in four years [Music] Julie may have the largest lithium deposits in the world but it started to fall behind countries like Australia and China when it comes to production and in China it's a one-stop shop with the mining and battery production happening together this is a leap delaying companies have been unwilling to take maybe you could make the batteries here in Chile well for me it would be excellent but the company we're experts in hydrology works but in mining words but in producing lithium if we put us to produce batteries we're probably not going to do it well things have been extra tense lately between the mines and the Chilean government the feds have put strict quotas on lithium production and they've also been trying to act tough in save face after some politico's were accused of taking bribes from the mines [Music] environmentalists are huge fans of the mines either they say that water is being sucked from nearby lagoons that feed these flocks of stunning flow meters what we do here has absolutely no impact to the community but we're still responsible what's happening with them we need to do counting of the flamingos every year they identify them by the feathers on the tail so they can differentiate every from England the miners here work for a week and then take a week off because of the dry hot salty conditions but there are some on-the-job perks this sunsets here are everyday amazing you have all these different colors that only women know the names every day and you don't get tired of that it's really beautiful [Music] alejandra has a point not so much about the colors that only women apparently know but about the beauty of the mines these odd marvels make the modern world run let Tesla's flamingos breeding program begin [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Bloomberg Originals

Views: 3,403,251

Keywords: Bloomberg, Hello World, Chile, Atacama, Batteries, Renewable Energy, lithium mining

Id: 50rXYrFCQMw

Length: 6min 23sec (383 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 07 2017