Lithium Extraction Gets Faster and Maybe Greener, Too (ieee.org) 67
Long-time Slashdot reader xetdog shared this report from IEEE Spectrum:
High in the Andes mountains where the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile intersect, white expanses of salt stretch for thousands of kilometers. Under these flats lie reservoirs of brine that contain upwards of 58% of the world's lithium. For decades, producers have extracted that lithium by pumping the water up to the surface and letting it evaporate until the lithium salts become concentrated enough to filter out. The process takes 12 to 18 months, leaving behind piles of waste containing other metals. It also evaporates nearly 2 million liters of local water resources, harming indigenous communities.
To keep up, many companies are now developing processes to chemically or physically filter out lithium from brines and inject the brine back underground. These direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies take hours instead of months and could double the production of lithium from existing brine operations. Much as shale extraction did for oil, DLE is a "potential game-changing technology for lithium supply," because it could unlock new sources of lithium, according to a recent report by Goldman Sachs. But in contrast to shale's fracking risks, DLE brings environmental benefits, reducing land and water use, and waste...
In China, a handful of commercial projects already use Chinese DLE innovator Sunresin's technology.
More than 12 startups are pursuing new DLE processes, according to the article, "with the intent of commercial production as early as 2025."
And America's Department of Energy is also investing millions of dollars in new DLE tech "to extract lithium from geothermal brines in the U.S., such as the Salton Sea in California, which the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates could provide over 24,000 metric tons of lithium a year."
To keep up, many companies are now developing processes to chemically or physically filter out lithium from brines and inject the brine back underground. These direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies take hours instead of months and could double the production of lithium from existing brine operations. Much as shale extraction did for oil, DLE is a "potential game-changing technology for lithium supply," because it could unlock new sources of lithium, according to a recent report by Goldman Sachs. But in contrast to shale's fracking risks, DLE brings environmental benefits, reducing land and water use, and waste...
In China, a handful of commercial projects already use Chinese DLE innovator Sunresin's technology.
More than 12 startups are pursuing new DLE processes, according to the article, "with the intent of commercial production as early as 2025."
And America's Department of Energy is also investing millions of dollars in new DLE tech "to extract lithium from geothermal brines in the U.S., such as the Salton Sea in California, which the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates could provide over 24,000 metric tons of lithium a year."
One problem solved (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is great, today's best mobile platform batteries need lithium, and battery prices are the primary expense for an EV. More lithium, extracted more efficiently, means lower battery prices and maybe an affordable EV before my current ICE dies of old age.
It's all benefit. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's all benefit. (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed.
Right now, we're in a situation where previous uses of lithium, specifically batteries, was too small to justify large amounts of recycling. However, that's currently changing, but will still take years. The longer LiIon EV batteries turn out to last, the longer it'll be before recycling them becomes a major source.
I've read the reports. Keep in mind that most of a LiIon battery is things other than lithium. Your typical LiIon battery is only 7% lithium. But that's still a lot more lithium than present in ore, and it should be obvious that all the other elements in a lithium ion battery are elements used in LiIon batteries. ;)
So pretty much by definition, LiIon batteries are the most dense source of materials for LiIon batteries available. Far denser than any ore or natural resource extraction.
You just need a big enough pile of batteries to make running the equipment worth it. Even if you're treating the batteries just like ore.
If you can use other separation and extraction techniques more suited for recycling batteries, even better. Less energy, labor, processing required = cheaper.
But, until then, we're looking at needing X millions of tons of lithium. There's about 8kg of lithium in an EV. If we consider EVs, UPS units, grid storage*, laptops, cell phones, power tools, and everything else, that we need 10kg per person, that's around 3M metric tons for the USA alone, 80M for the world.
Once we get up there, recycling can become the major source of lithium for our batteries, but until then we need to mine an awful lot of the stuff. Using "mine" generically of course, most lithium extraction isn't "hard rock" like we think of for traditional mining of stuff like iron or coal.
*Most of which wouldn't be lithium, I think.
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Recycling will get fixed as soon as the volume is there. You can design batteries for easy recycling. You just need to do it and there need to be convincing incentives. This can be that the cost of recycling gets priced into the sale price, or it can be that recycling the batteries is actually profitable (best version).
The other thing is that lifetimes have been extended massively with secondary use as stationary storage. The only problem this industry has is that it was niche for too long. That time is ove
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Recycling will get fixed as soon as the volume is there.
That's what I said though? "You just need a big enough pile of batteries to make running the equipment worth it."
The problem is that Tesla Roadsters were too small of a run to justify running a recycling center for their batteries, plus I'm not sure how many of those toys have actually been disposed of, rather than having 2nd or 3rd parties doing battery repairs and such. Most of even first year Model S cars haven't reached end of life either. They're only hitting 12 years old right now.
As you say, lifet
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Recycling will get fixed as soon as the volume is there.
That's what I said though? "You just need a big enough pile of batteries to make running the equipment worth it."
Yep. I agree with you.
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Not quite. But once the method has to be economically viable, then yes, very much. I do agree that the fossile industry has to die as soon as possible. At this time, they still have ample bribe money though and the voters are asleep, easy to manipulate and deeply stupid.
Important correction (Score:5, Interesting)
From the summary:
It is absolutely not true that these regions of the Andes mountain contain 58% of the world's lithium. They contain a negligible percentage of the world's lithium, which is an abundant element found all over the world, especially the oceans. What these regions contain is upwards of 58% of the lithium reserves that are easily accessible via the currently-economical extraction techniques. New techniques or shifting economic conditions could radically change this situation.
For example, if the price of lithium were to increase by a few times, extraction from seawater would become economical even with no changes in technology. New techniques for making extraction from seawater less energy-intensive, or continuing decreases in energy prices due to renewables could make seawater extraction economical even at current lithium prices (and note that the cheap energy could be intermittent).
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Can we stop with this nonsense? Great Barrier Reef is thriving, not dying.
Re: Important correction (Score:1)
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You do troll indeed. I'm merely stating the well established fact that Cult of Gaia doomsday narrative of oceanic acidity killing oceanic life.
It's been long debunked. Stop with chanting your insane anti-reality dogma.
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Except that of course, it's not. And neither is advanced chemistry, or mathematics, which tell us that Great Coral Reef, the icon of the "acidification is killing the life in the oceans"... is doing great.
In before: you claim that polar bears are dying out because of running out of arctic ice, another favourite religious icon of your cult.
Re: Important correction (Score:2)
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And then I beat the lunatic chanting that sky is on fire as it's raining on the head with said hoe.
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Mineral extraction from seawater is a stupendously horrible idea. With all the environmental pressures marine life is already facing, doubling down on the carnage and bringing seawater chemical composition to the table could kill the remaining species that are currently hanging on.
Nonsense.
The techniques used to extract lithium from seawater don't add anything to the sea. It's basically the same process as desalination, and the resulting freshwater can be made drinkable and used as such. The extracted salt and mineral content is then processed to separate out the lithium and other useful minerals, including salt.
The only effect on marine life would be exactly the same as a large desalination plant, and those have proven to be pretty benign, with relatively small and extremely loc
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If the price of lithium doubles, let alone triples, the 'green revolution' is dead and with it most moderately habitable environments.
If the price of lithium doubles or tripples...it will go back to where it was last year... [tradingeconomics.com] yawn...
Just over a year ago, lithium prices were sitting at nearly $80,000 a ton in December 2022. The U.S. government was so worried about the metal’s price and its impact on advanced technologies it enacted a comprehensive supply review..... Then, the bubble burst. In one year, the cost of lithium has dropped a staggering 80%. Lithium prices currently hover at approximately $13600 a ton as of December 18th [forbes.com]
The Users Need It More Than The Phones. (Score:1)
Kurt said it was OK.
58% sounds wrong... (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the US Geological Survey [usgs.gov] [pdf], Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile have a combined lithium resources of 52 million tons, with a global estimated resource of 98 million tons.
Middle of last year, large lithium deposits in the McDermitt caldera estimates between 20 and 40 million tons, which even the lower estimate puts it in the #2 largest deposit tied with Argentina.
Turns out that with lithium in demand, people are starting to prospect for it and surprise surprise, actually finding it. People make a lot of hay about the Andes region being a major resource, but because of the political situation they're getting bypassed entirely.
=Smidge=
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Ouch. 98M tons is awfully close to my estimate that a non-carbon "fully EV" world would require ~80M tons of the stuff world wide. That's ~10kg per person, when an EV takes ~8kg.
But, as you say, we're prospecting for more, so the reserves are going up now. In addition, as we see here, new technologies are being developed and sometimes just engineered* to make extraction cheaper(which increases reserves). The price ticks up a notch? That increases reserves too, as now more areas are economical to extrac
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Lithium is not a rare earth metal. It never has been. Dunno where you got that idea...
=Smidge=
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Dunno where you got that idea...
Just as I don't know where you got the idea that I think lithium is a "rare earth metal", as it's a position/belief that I've never held.
I mean, did I write somewhere that it's a rare earth metal? Did I say something that identifies it as a rare earth metal? I'm curious.
"Reserves" of natural resources are all measured in "known and economically extractable at current prices". Given that we measure non-rare earth metals by this stick all the time, including oil, iron, copper, aluminum, and more, I really
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Oops, disregard my previous post. Didn't realize that you were responding to a filtered AC and not me directly.
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Argentina is either a huge opportunity for someone to come in and get rich off lithium mining, or a write off for at least a decade.
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At this point civil war is probably the main concern.
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But my...
"checks notes"
Nazi libertarians.
over 24,000 metric tons of lithium a year. (Score:2)
Do they mean 24 KiloTons of actual Lithium? Or just 24Kt of Lithium salt(s)
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Reading the article, it'd be elemental lithium, most likely.
They're doing ion exchange stuff. Give out a hydrogen ion, get back a lithium ion. So a salt might be formed when they regenerate the beads, but they probably try to keep it elemental. They may be using an oxide of it, that's normally what's in batteries, rather than elemental lithium. It'd be a lot easier to transport at least, elemental lithium likes to react with stuff.
" harming indigenous communities." (Score:2)
Re:" harming indigenous communities." (Score:5, Informative)
I think that it's the after-processing that causes the problems.
Basically, after concentrating it, they use various chemicals to actually extract it. The "vast amounts" of clean water(we don't care about the brine) is in the regeneration and rinsing of those chemicals.
Basically, the unstated step 4+ in the process is what uses the water. Including stupid shit like releasing the waste brine into drinkable streams.
https://www.ibatterymetals.com... [ibatterymetals.com]
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Again, I'm sad for your blinders and anger.
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Value of undisturbed nature is extremely negative, because undisturbed nature is a torturer-murderer of humans. Parasites alone are a stuff of Lovecraftian nightmares.
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Would you like some untouched natural state for humanity? Let's start by introducing tape worms into your gut.
Fun part: they're one of the biggest factors in humans being unable to grow to their full IQ potential historically, by draining critical nutrients during brain growth stages in children.
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In this case, land use hasn't been an identified problem, while water use has been. Using evaporation to collect salts has been around since very early times. Indeed, people still collect salt via evaporation including natives of Hawaii, around the dead sea, and in India (I saw a special on it once).
Note how you had to put quotes around it - said value is very hard to quantify. Reminds me of how "priceless" can often translate as "worthless".
Undisturbed nature isn't very good if it means that the people
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Sure, but when can they apply it to Latinum (Score:2)
Seriously. I must be tired - because I saw "Latinum" the first time I read the title...Had a bit of a WTF moment there.
Silicon based batteries (Score:2)
I'm hoping they can make progress on the silicon based battery tech I saw in the press a little while back
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It is compared to the alternatives, and no, evaporation is not what is done elsewhere. Elsewhere, lithium is mined and refined from ore, which is a far more destructive process.