A New Study Finds 142,500 Tonnes of Lithium Beneath Tunisia’s Chott El Jerid. Here Is What That Actually Means.
Tunisia may be sitting on one of the more significant lithium discoveries in North Africa. A study published in the Journal of African Earth Sciences estimates that the hypersaline brine beneath Chott El Jerid, a vast salt basin in the south of the country, contains approximately 142,500 tonnes of lithium. The research was led by Hassan Khlissa, with Elhoucine Essefi and Bart Van der Bruggen, and the findings were first reported in detail by Al Jazeera and La Presse.
The numbers behind the estimate are precise. The researchers calculated the resource based on a brine volume of 5 billion cubic meters and an average corrected lithium concentration of 28.5 parts per million. They also mapped a higher-concentration zone in the northwestern sector of the basin, where lithium levels reach up to 51 ppm. Based on a reference price for lithium carbonate, the study’s authors and subsequent reporting estimate the gross value of this resource at around $2.2 billion.
Why This Matters
Lithium is the defining metal of the energy transition. It is the core component in the batteries that power electric vehicles, smartphones, and grid-scale storage for solar and wind energy. A single electric vehicle typically requires between 5 and 10 kilograms of lithium, and demand is rising as manufacturers like Tesla and BYD scale production. For Tunisia, a country with limited hydrocarbon resources, a domestic lithium source could represent a strategic opening into the battery supply chain.
The Science: Where the Lithium Came From
The study does not simply measure what is in the water. It proposes a geological model to explain how the lithium got there. The researchers argue that lithium-bearing volcanic and sedimentary rocks surrounding the basin were leached by geothermal fluids circulating along east-west fault systems. These fluids carried the dissolved lithium into the salt basin, where evaporation and long-term accumulation concentrated it over time. This is a coherent genetic model, but the authors are careful to describe it as a strong hypothesis that requires further testing.
The Caveats: Resource, Not Reserve
This is the most important part of the story, and it is the part most likely to be lost in headlines.
The 142,500-tonne figure is an estimate of a potential resource, not a declaration of an economically extractable reserve. The lead researcher, Hassan Khlissa, told Al Jazeera explicitly that the number "does not mean Tunisia already possesses this quantity as a reserve ready for mining," and that economic extraction still needs to be verified. The calculation assumes a uniform brine depth of one meter, while the actual depth varies across the basin. More importantly, the volume represents lithium present in the brine under those assumptions, not the quantity that can necessarily be recovered and sold.
Extraction also presents technical and environmental challenges. The lithium concentration is low relative to the other salts in the brine, meaning any industrial process would need to concentrate the solution first, likely through evaporation, and then use adsorption technologies to capture the lithium. Evaporation at scale would require handling enormous volumes of brine, and Tunisia already faces significant water stress. As Khlissa noted, large-scale evaporation could negatively affect groundwater reserves, raising a difficult question about whether the project is worth the water cost. La Presse echoed this caution, noting that the technical and environmental challenge is "colossal" and that any realization depends on further prospection and rigorous feasibility studies.
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