The clean energy transition from fossil fuels-based energy has spurred international exploration and increased extraction of critical minerals to be used in the development of clean energy technologies. Lithium is expected to have the largest increase in demand of any other critical minerals due to this transition, with primarily uses in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and grid storage. Globally, lithium is produced from two major resource types, lithium-rich brines and lithium-rich pegmatites. Globally, the environmental impacts of lithium mining have been relatively understudied, while in many cases critical minerals mining has been shown in some cases to have extensive environmental impacts. Duke research aims to generate a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of the potential water quality risks induced from lithium mining.
Research at Vengosh Lab on critical minerals is linked to the new Critical Minerals Hub @ Duke
- Avner Vengosh presented at Duke event on lithium in Bolivia https://researchblog.duke.edu/2023/10/02/lithium-riches-beneath-bolivias-salar-de-uyuni/
- Gordon Willimas presented at the 2023AGU meeting in San Fransisco, California his paper “Potential Water Quality Impacts of Hard-Rock Lithium Mining”
- Williams, G.D.Z. and Vengosh, A. (2025) Quality of Wastewater from Lithium-Brine Mining. Environmental Science and Technology Letters. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c01124
- Williams, G.D.Z., Saltman, S., Wang, Z., Warren, D.M., Hill, R.C., Vengosh, A. (2024) The potential water quality impacts of hard-rock lithium mining: Insights from a legacy pegmatite mine in North Carolina, USA. Science of the Total Environment, 956, 177281, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.177281
- Williams, G.D.Z. and Vengosh, A. (2025) Quality of wastewater from lithium-brine mining. Environmental Science and Technology Letters, 12, 2, 151–157.
- Williams, G.D.Z., Petrović, M., Hill, R.C., Hall, G.A., Vengosh, A. (2025) The Water Quality Impacts of Legacy Hard-Rock Lithium Mining and Processing. Environmental Science and Technology, 59, 49, 16492–26505, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.5c13682
- Hall, G.A., Williams, G.D.Z., Sirbescu, M-L.C., Lu, P.L., Dwyer, G.S., Richter, D.D., Vengosh, A. (2025) Strontium isotopes and Rb/Sr tracers in surface soils for locating subsurface lithium pegmatites. Applied Geochemistry, 106631. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeochem.2025.106631
- Williams, G.D.Z., Nativ, P., and Vengosh, A. (2025) The Role of Boron in Controlling the pH of Lithium Brines. Science Advances, 11 (21), eadw3268. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adw326
- Lopez, R.F., Huayta, J., Williams, G.D.Z., Seay, S.A., Lalwani, P.D., Bacot, S.N., Vengosh, A., and Meyer, J.N. (2025) Lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide particles cause developmental neurotoxicity in Caenorhabditis elegans. Environmental Science: Advances, 4 (11), 1767-1781, https://doi.org/10.1039/D5VA00103J
