My understanding is you can get battery grade lithium hydroxide from petalite. The problem with petalite is that you get less a percentage of battery grade product from the same amount of feed. Some reports say it's as as much as one third from petalite but more recent studies have suggested it will be much higher than this.
Think of it this way, if processing is only a third as good as spodumene then that 10Mt resource becomes 3.3Mt which is not so good.
In regard to supply, the fundamentals are there for a major energy disruption worldwide. They say lithium is the new gasoline. If this turns out to be true, which I suspect if will, then demand will outstrip supply for some time. That said, a conservative investor would say that within 5 years, brine production will outpace hard rock and eventually bring prices down. For now however the price of lithium is skyrocketing.
Not sure about the glass and ceramics markets, it's not why I'm investing in lithium, I'm all about the energy transformation. That said, we have a bloke on the board that reckons he has contacts in this market, time will tell.
DKO Price at posting:
5.5¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held