LATAM Nations

Subject: Geography

Section: Economic Geography

Context- The KhanijBidesh India Ltd or KABIL is engaging with primarily LATAM nations for Lithium Reserves and Cobalt Mines.

Concept-

India has committed to invest $6 million jointly with the Australian government in lithium and cobalt mines in Australia in the next six months.
The KhanijBidesh India Ltd or KABIL – a mining joint venture between the state-run National Aluminium Company Ltd (NALCO), Hindustan Copper Ltd and Mineral Exploration Corp Ltd – has signed a preliminary agreement with Australia’s Critical Minerals Facilitation Oﬃce (CMFO).
Engagements are also underway with other source countries (primarily LATAM nations) such as Argentina, Bolivia, Chile.

LATAM Nations:

Latin America is the portion of the Americas comprising countries and regions where Romance languages—languages that derived from Latin—such as Spanish, Portuguese, and French are predominantly spoken.
The term was originally used to refer to places in the Americas that were ruled under the Spanish, Portuguese, and French empires.
The countries included are: Argentina, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay.

Lithium Triangle:

Lithium Triangle is an intersection of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, known for high quality salt flats.
Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, Salar de Atacama in Chile and Salar de Arizaro in Argentina contains over 45%of known global lithium reserves.
Beneath Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat lies the world’s greatest lithium deposits.
Bolivia, one of South America’s poorest countries, envisions development by harvesting lithium on an industrial scale from underground saltwater brines.
It can be mined from rock or processed from brine.
Lithium dissolved in underground saline aquifers called “brine”, pumped to surface by wells and then allowed to evaporate in vast knee-deep ponds.

About Lithium:

Lithium is a chemical element with symbol Li and atomic number 3.
It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal.
Under standard conditions, it is the lightest metal and the lightest solid element.
Lithium is highly reactive and flammable, and is stored in mineral oil.
It never occurs freely in nature, but only in (usually ionic) compounds, such as pegmatitic minerals, which were once the main source of lithium.
Due to its solubility as an ion, it is present in ocean water and is commonly obtained from brines.
Lithium metal is isolated electrolytically from a mixture of lithium chloride and potassium chloride.
Lithium is a key component used in Electric Vehicle batteries. And India, through its ₹ 18,100- crore PLI scheme is oﬀering incentives for companies to build battery cells locally.
China and Hong Kong are the biggest lithium battery suppliers to India.

Applications:

Lithium and its compounds have several industrial applications, including heat-resistant glass and ceramics, lithium grease lubricants, flux additives for iron, steel and aluminium production, lithium batteries, and lithium-ion batteries.
It works with other elements, drugs, enzymes, hormones, vitamins, and growth factors in the body in many different ways. People use it for medicine.
Lithium salts have proven to be useful as a mood-stabilizing drug in the treatment of bipolar disorder in humans.