Brine-Hosted Lithium in the Middle East: The Measured Record

Lithium exploration was filtered for decades through the economics of solar evaporation, which required brine grades of several hundred milligrams per litre in an arid climate. The Middle East fails that filter almost everywhere, and its measured brine record had never been compiled across the region's countries and brine classes. Direct lithium extraction changes the filter: sorbent, ion-exchange, membrane and electrochemical processes recover lithium from brines in the tens to low hundreds of mg/L, and laboratory systems reach lower still. Geologic® compiled that record on a documented search, 325 records screened and 57 regional records used, across eight countries and basins and three brine classes, grading every published value on a five-tier evidence scale.

The measured record is low in grade and the review says so: Anatolian geothermal fluids at 1 to 32 mg/L, Dead Sea potash end brine at 29 to 40 mg/L, Iranian playa brines at survey maxima of 18 to 81 ppm with single samples at 144 to 145 ppm, and two Urmia Lake brines at 129 to 178 ppm. Two settings combine a measured brine, extraction tests on that same brine and an operating industrial circuit: the Anatolian geothermal fleet, where ion sieves reach up to 95 per cent recovery in batch, and the Dead Sea potash circuit, which passively pre-concentrates lithium about two-fold in end brine that is already lifted and paid for. Gulf produced water remains an unmeasured hypothesis, with no published lithium assay for any stream. The review also rejects figures that had entered the literature without a traceable basis, among them the 300 to 600 mg/L attributed to Iranian brines and a 35 kt/yr Turkish rate that fails a mass balance. Its central practical point is that the first exploration action in most countries is chemical analysis of water that industry already pumps, and no published regional test has reached a continuous pilot or demonstrated economic viability.