Lithium in Mekanism is made from Water, by boiling it down twice in a Thermal Evaporation Plant. The first pass turns Water into Brine, and the second turns that Brine into Liquid Lithium, with each pass giving back a tenth of what went in. There’s no Lithium ore to find, so this is the only way that you’re able to get it.
From there it’s turned into a chemical, and then either crystallized into 
Lithium Dust or converted into Tritium. You’ll need the dust for the first tier of the Induction Matrix, whereas Tritium is half of the fuel for a Fusion Reactor. A single Lithium Dust works out at 10 buckets of Water.
How to Get It
There are four steps to go through, and you won’t be able to skip any of them. Most of the work is done by the two plants, as they’re the ones that boil away nine tenths of the fluid on each pass. Here’s what goes in and what will come out of each step.
| Step | Machine | In | Out |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thermal Evaporation Plant | 10 mB Water | 1 mB Brine |
| 2 | Thermal Evaporation Plant | 10 mB Brine | 1 mB Liquid Lithium |
| 3 | Rotary Condensentrator | 1 mB Liquid Lithium | 1 mB Lithium |
| 4 | Chemical Crystallizer | 100 mB Lithium | 1 Lithium Dust |
You’ll want two plants for this, with the first one’s Brine piped straight into the second. It can be done with a single plant, but then you’d have to let it run dry of Water before putting the Brine back in, and it’s far easier to just leave two running. Both of them need heating above 300 K, which usually means 
Advanced Solar Generators in the top corners.
The second plant only has a tenth of the fluid to deal with, so it’s able to be a lot smaller than the first. Even the smallest plant, 3 blocks tall with 4 solars, will take in over 1,000 mB of Brine a tick, whereas a full-height Brine plant on 4 solars only makes 640. Remember that the output Valve on each one needs a pipe set to pull.
Turning Liquid Lithium into Lithium Dust
What comes out of the second plant is a fluid, but the machines after it will only take Lithium as a chemical. You’ll need a 
Rotary Condensentrator to convert it, which does it 1 to 1 when it’s set to Decondensentrating, and then a Pressurized Tube is used to carry the Lithium on to wherever it’s needed.
For the dust, that’s a 
Chemical Crystallizer, which uses 100 mB of Lithium for each Lithium Dust. It takes 10 seconds per dust at 160 FE/t (400 J/t) with no upgrades, so it’ll usually be the slowest part of the line, and it’s worth adding 
Speed Upgrades here before you build a bigger plant.
Lithium Dust can’t be made in a 
Crafting Table, as it only ever comes out of the Chemical Crystallizer. The 
Liquid Lithium Bucket has no recipe either, it’s just what you’ll get when a 
Bucket is filled from a tank of it.
How to Use It
Lithium Dust only has two recipes in Mekanism itself, and they’re both for the Induction Matrix. The 
Basic Induction Cell takes 4 dust with 4 
Energy Tablets around a 
Basic Energy Cube, and the 
Basic Induction Provider takes 4 dust with 4 
Basic Control Circuits. The higher tiers are crafted from the tier below, so they’ll all start with Lithium.
The other use skips the dust completely. Lithium, as a chemical, goes into a 
Solar Neutron Activator, which turns it into Tritium at 1 to 1 during the day. Tritium is then mixed with Deuterium to make D-T Fuel for the Fusion Reactor, which is where most of your Lithium will end up going later on.
If you’ve already crystallized more than you need, a 
Chemical Oxidizer will turn each Lithium Dust back into 100 mB of Lithium. Nothing is lost going either way, so the dust is a handy way to store it in a 
Chest instead of filling up Chemical Tanks.
How Much Water It Takes
As both passes are 10 to 1, every 1 mB of Lithium will have used up 100 mB of Water to get there. A Lithium Dust is 100 mB of Lithium, so that’s 10 buckets of Water for each one. A Basic Induction Cell and a Basic Induction Provider together come to 80 buckets, which might sound like a lot, but it’s very little for a plant to get through.
| First plant height | Brine made | Liquid Lithium made | Lithium Dust it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 106 mB/t | 10 mB/t | About 2 a second |
| 9 | 320 mB/t | 32 mB/t | About 6 a second |
| 18 | 640 mB/t | 64 mB/t | About 12 a second |
So the plants are never really going to be the limit for dust, as it’s the Chemical Crystallizer that holds things up. Where the bigger plants start to matter is Tritium, as a Fusion Reactor that’s running at its highest injection rate will go through 49 mB of it a tick.
The Water itself is best taken from an 
Electric Pump over a single Water source, which won’t ever run out. Once you’ve got Lithium flowing, the Solar Neutron Activator is the next machine you’ll want to build, as that’s what is needed to turn it into Tritium.
FAQ
It’s made by running Water through a Thermal Evaporation Plant twice, which gives Brine on the first pass and Liquid Lithium on the second. That fluid then goes through a Rotary Condensentrator to become the Lithium chemical, and a Chemical Crystallizer will turn 100 mB of it into a Lithium Dust.
Lithium Dust is only used to craft the Basic Induction Cell and the Basic Induction Provider, which take 4 each. The chemical is also turned into Tritium in a Solar Neutron Activator, and that’s needed as fuel for a Fusion Reactor.
Each one takes 10 buckets of Water, as the plant keeps a tenth of the fluid on each of its two passes and the Chemical Crystallizer needs 100 mB of Lithium per dust. That’s very little for a plant though, as even the smallest pair will cover about 2 dust a second in daylight.
There’s no Lithium ore in the mod, so it can’t be mined, and none of the ore processing machines will give you any. It only comes from Brine in a Thermal Evaporation Plant, which is why you’ll need a plant built before you’re able to craft an Induction Matrix.
