1. INTRODUCTION Lithium is found in three main types of deposits: 1) brines from evaporitic salars and geothermal deposits, located in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia; 2) crystalline rocks enriched in lithium silicate and/or phosphate minerals, found in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Portugal, and Zimbabwe; 3) lithium-rich hectorite clays, derived from volcanic deposits, found in the United States and Mexico. Brazil has significant potential for lithium exploitation, as indicated by newly identified deposits totalling 1.3 Mt of Li2O in contained reserves (USGS, 2025), including spodumene, amblygonite, lepidolite, and petalite. Historically, lithium minerals in Brazil were mined and processed through artisanal methods, with manual sorting followed by dense media separation. In Brazil, spodumene-bearing pegmatites are mainly associated with minerals such as albite, petalite, quartz, microcline, muscovite, and feldspar. Important deposits occur in three main regions, known as Pegmatite Provinces: Northeast (Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, and Ceará), Eastern (Minas Gerais and Bahia), and Southern (São Paulo) (CPRM, 2020). There is also evidence of new prospective areas for lithium deposits in the states of Tocantins, Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro (DNPM,2016). Since the discovery of new potential lithium-bearing areas, Brazil has emerged as an important supplier of hard-rock lithium, particularly in the Eastern Brazilian Pegmatite Province (Minas Gerais), widely known as the “Lithium Valley.” Recent technical reports and pilot-scale studies indicate that most Brazilian projects rely predominantly on gravity-based pre-concentration, particularly Dense Media Separation (DMS), reflecting the coarse-grained mineralisation and favourable density contrast between spodumene and gangue minerals. Table 1 summarises key processing parameters reported for selected Brazilian lithium projects, located in Minas Gerais. Table 1 – Summary of processing routes and metallurgical performance of selected Brazilian lithium projects Project (Location) Main Process ROM (% Li₂O) Concentr ate (% Li₂O) DMS Top Size (mm) Recovery (%) Developmen t Stage Grota do Cirilo (Araçuaí/Itinga) Crushing + DMS + magnetic ~1.3–1. 5 5.5–6.0 ~10–12 >70 global Operating mine Salinas (Salinas) DMS 1.38 5.5 +1 to ~6.3 93 stage Pilot Scale Volta Grande (Nazareno) Crushing + gravity + ~1.0–1. 1 5.5–6.4 Not applied Not detailed Operating mine 141
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