Presenter
Kyung Jae Lee, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Petroleum Engineering
University of Houston
Description
Tackling climate change is one of the major challenges facing the U.S. today, and it has led to significant efforts to decarbonize energy use as a way to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. Major ways to achieve this energy transition involve electrifying transportation and increasing renewable energy use in electricity generation. As both electric vehicles and renewable solar–and–wind electricity generation rely on lithium–ion energy storage (i.e., lithium–ion batteries), the demand for lithium has greatly increased during the past decade; it is predicted to escalate along the market growth of electric vehicles and renewable power generation, and lithium is consequently classified as a critical element. To enhance and diversify the supply of lithium, we investigate shale brines as a sustainable new source of lithium, given that water produced from shale reservoirs has been recently revealed as a potential source of substantial amounts of lithium. This opens new pathways to address the entire petroleum system and lithium geochemical cycle.
