There are over 100,000 active wells in the Permian basin in active flow. Each and every one has a basin wide average of 6 bbl of salt water to 1 bbl of oil with lithium concentrations typical to other shales including the Eagle Ford and the Barnett that UT Austin studied. In short just the Permian basin alone has more lithium recoverable that we could ever use. This says nothing of the Barnett, Eagle Ford, Woodbine, Haynesville, just to name a few other basins within a hundred ish miles of UT Austin. Every one of them is loaded with lithium in the form of sales that were part of the seawater when the shale was deposited in the first place. Lithium is ubiquitous to shakes.
Look at one wells flow back over a single week then think there’s 100000 more wells in Midland basin on flow back or ESP flows.
Nice technology! Hope it gets scaled up and applied. Heh..it even might be considered to make fracking “green”....