STORY: On a dusty plain in northern Argentina, some of the work to shift to a green energy future is taking place.
These black tubes fill a massive tank with salty brine sucked deep from the ground below as part of an $870 million project in the province of Salta.
The brine contains this white metal: lithium, which is essential for making electric vehicle batteries.
French miner Eramet is attempting to use an innovative technique, known as direct lithium extraction, or DLE, in a race for cleaner, faster and cheaper ways to produce the metal with less water.
Unlike traditional methods, there are no pools of brine spanning the size of football fields where lithium is left behind after the liquid evaporates in the sun.
Jean-Baptiste Hogard runs the company's lithium business.
"Thanks to this technology we will recoup 90% of the lithium content where traditional approach is 40-50% when we do evaporation."
The technology is unproven at a large scale so global competitors are watching to see how it pans out.
Pipeline valves need to open properly. Computers must sync with several thousand sensors. An evaporating chamber shaped like a spaceship has to avoid temperature swings.
Eramet aims to pump out its first ton of lithium carbonate in November and scale up to 24,000 metric tons a year by mid-2025.
It could help Argentina narrow the gap with Chile which is Latin America's top lithium producer.
Despite a lithium supply glut that has depressed prices and forced some mining companies to pull back, Eramet's CEO said it had a healthy margin, with current prices more than double its cash costs per ton.
