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Paper short abstract

This paper examines innovation in production technologies undertaken by the lithium industry. Despite the hype and investments, these innovations remain experimental, in part due to the idiosyncrasy - or ontological fluidity - of lithium and its host brine.

Paper long abstract

Innovation is central to so-called green technologies, needed for advancing towards the elimination of fossil fuels from energy production and use. Scholars argue that innovation produces economic growth, captures wealth, and generates better, more efficient consumer goods, and thus have penned numerous studies of innovation in battery and EV supply chains. By contrast to consumer goods, this paper examines innovation in production technologies undertaken by the lithium industry, which many see as essential for expanding production beyond existing mines and in ways that they claim will be more ecologically sustainable. These methods, called “direct lithium extraction” or DLE for short, use filtering devices to glean lithium from its host environment, usually a brine mixture of water, salts, and other elements (some of the also commercially valuable). Despite the hype and investments, DLE remains experimental, as companies struggle to make the technology scalable and durable. One obstacle they face is the idiosyncrasy of each brine, where unique natural environments translate into needing also unique innovations and knowledges. Based on an analysis of interviews, technical reports, and an analytical framework that reflects insights from the STS literature on laboratories and world-making, this article examines how companies are managing this uniqueness through an analysis of operations, planned and piloted, at the Maricunga Salt flat in northern Chile.