Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Rocking Out

Now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, Jonas Toupal ’19 is tracking the downstream effects of lithium mining and looking for ways to safeguard against them.

BY ANDREW WICKENDEN ’09

“I was always drawn to geology, as it is one of the few disciplines that allows one to work outside in the environment,” says Jonas Toupal ’19.

Over the past four years, Toupal has split his time between the lab at the University of Pennsylvania and field sites in his home country of the Czech Republic and Central Europe, exploring lithium deposits.

Lithium’s energy density to weight ratio makes it an ideal element for batteries, and with the move away from a global carbon-based economy, its demand is only expected to grow.

“Traditionally, lithium is mined from brines in semi- arid parts of the world, but the recent increase in demand is causing the exploration of granite deposits as well,” explains Toupal, whose dissertation is focused on understanding the consequences “that mining these deposits might introduce and...[how] to prevent them.”

Toupal began studying the impact of mining as a student at HWS. Working with Professor of Geoscience Nan Crystal Arens (right) and Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Kristen Brubaker, Toupal investigated how satellite images might help map mercury contamination caused by gold mining.

This research grew into an Honors project with Arens focusing on remote sensing in mineralogy — “not at all my area of expertise,” Arens says. “But my approach to independent work is to meet students where they are, help them find a question they are curious about, and keep challenging them until I find the edges of their capability. Then I’ll push a little more to support them in growing. My background in plant physiology and statistics turned out to be helpful, and Jonas had the GIS (geographical information system) experience from his classwork and the grit to go find answers to questions that I couldn’t help with.”

By the time Toupal graduated with Honors, “he had been thinking like and acting like a graduate student for a couple of semesters,” Arens says. When it came time to apply to Penn, his research background and close work with Arens — “her guidance, mentorship and feedback on the countless versions of my statement of purpose,” Toupal recalls — “made my application as strong as it could have been.... Every institution I applied to wanted to see a strong set of research skills, which is why I am so grateful for all the undergraduate research opportunities available at HWS.”

During his Ph.D. work, Toupal connected with Scott Keogh ’91, CEO of the electric vehicle company Scout Motors, and began exploring the broader implications of his research. “Scott helped me understand the EV market better, lithium sites in general and the industry,” Toupal says. “He even put me in touch with a lithium battery recycling company out of Nevada; getting lithium out of a rock or a battery isn’t that different at the end of the day, and getting it from spent batteries will help offset some of the potential negative impacts of mining.”

As he explores lithium-rich sites, collecting and analyzing water, rock and sediment samples, Toupal is trying to understand “the natural background leaching” that occurs there and what other elements might be present “that might cause issues down the line once we start developing the sites.”

At the potential mining sites in Central Europe, he’s found elevated fluoride and aluminum concentrations, which in large enough quantities could have negative impacts on humans, but there are “also negative impacts from getting lithium from brine,” he explains. “In general, we’ll need more lithium because it’s the best energy dense material we currently have for batteries, so I try to provide the geochemical impacts...so we can build in safety right off the bat.”