New Solar-Powered Device Extracts and Stores Lithium from Brine

The race to extract lithium sustainably and efficiently has been heating up since Chinese researchers announced a new method to pull the critical mineral out of seawater using solar energy.  The scientists—including Zhu Jia of Nanjing University and Mi Baoxia from the University of California, Berkeley—published last week an article in the journal Science, in which they unveil the novel and, as they say, a potential pathway "toward the sustainable extraction of critical resources." Extracting lithium from brine and seawater has…