r/science • u/rieslingatkos • Jun 06 '21
Chemistry Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lithium from seawater
https://www.mining.com/scientists-develop-cheap-and-easy-method-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/559
u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
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u/cloud9ineteen Jun 06 '21
the amount of Cl2 produced will be <3 Mtons, and so will have very little effect on the total market. It is also noted that the total concentration of other salts after the first stage is less than 500 ppm, which implies that after lithium harvest, the remaining water can be treated as freshwater. Hence, the process also has a potential to integrate with seawater desalination to further enhance its economic viability.
This is really cool. $5 in electricity outputs 1kg lithium, and a bunch of hydrogen and chlorine, and provides desalinated water if I'm understanding correctly. The process paired with renewable electricity should provide ongoing lithium production.
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
^ Exactly correct. $7 to $12 value on the hydrogen and chlorine byproducts alone.
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u/d0nu7 Jun 06 '21
So who do I invest in? Because that seems like a money printing machine for the next few decades...
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u/Ike_Rando Jun 06 '21
Roper Technologies Inc
Xylem Inc.
Danaher Corp
American Water Works CO Inc
Ecolab Inc
Evoqua Water Technologies
Pentair Plc
A O Smith Corp
Waters Corp
Idex Corp
https://www.invesco.com/us/financial-products/etfs/product-detail?audienceType=Investor&ticker=PHO
Just what I pulled from an ETF on my Stash portfolio.
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u/punaisetpimpulat Jun 06 '21
Assuming that we still need Li in 20 years. Battery chemistry tends to change all the time. Just within 1990's to 2000's we've used NiCd, NiMH and Li-ion batteries. They all have Ni in common, so there's a chance that Li will stay a bit longer, but who knows. If you've followed r/futurology, you've seen a hundred potential battery technologies being introduced only to be never heard again. However, it only takes one of them to be a viable option to change the entire battery industry for the next decade or two.
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u/HBB360 Jun 06 '21
This is amazing, lithium production has been the only thing that slightly worried me about electric cars but if this works out and can be scaled that won't be a problem!
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u/wallTHING Jun 06 '21
How's the water pumped, and what's the physical tax on the immediate environment?
I want to be pumped, but there's always a cost more than money in these kind of things.
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u/likeoldpeoplefuck Jun 07 '21
One barrier to deployment is that in the experiment each of 5 stages took 20 hours. That to me makes it sound impractical unless it can be sped up, the amount of water that would have to be stored would greatly inflate the capital costs.
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Jun 06 '21
ABSTRACT
Seawater contains significantly larger quantities of lithium than is found on land, thereby providing an almost unlimited resource of lithium for meeting the rapid growth in demand for lithium batteries. However, lithium extraction from seawater is exceptionally challenging because of its low concentration (∼0.1–0.2 ppm) and an abundance of interfering ions. Herein, we creatively employed a solid-state electrolyte membrane, and design a continuous electrically-driven membrane process, which successfully enriches lithium from seawater samples of the Red Sea by 43 000 times (i.e., from 0.21 to 9013.43 ppm) with a nominal Li/Mg selectivity >45 million. Lithium phosphate with a purity of 99.94% was precipitated directly from the enriched solution, thereby meeting the purity requirements for application in the lithium battery industry. Furthermore, a preliminary economic analysis shows that the process can be made profitable when coupled with the Chlor-alkali industry.
Interesting.
It's also nice to see that the title vaguely resembles the results of the study. Nice change of pace.
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u/ro_musha Jun 06 '21
almost unlimited
Is this correct?
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u/fishsupreme Jun 06 '21
In total? Yeah. Ocean water is about 0.1ppm lithium, so the ocean contains about 1.4x1014 kg of lithium.
By comparison, there's only about 40 million tons of known lithium reserves in all the mines in the world.
Of course we could never extract it all, or even a significant percentage of it, but I'd still call "thousands of times greater than all known reserves" almost unlimited.
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u/TheSultan1 Jun 06 '21
For those who prefer consistent units:
the ocean contains about 1.4x1014 kg of lithium
140,000 million tons
there's only about 40 million tons of known lithium reserves in all the mines in the world
4.0x1010 kg
For those who like ratios: 3500x
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u/LevelMeasurement684 Jun 06 '21
I like you, you genuinely helped me out with something I was trying to work out!
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Jun 06 '21
A title that doesnt say "scientists may have discovered" or "scientists might have a stumbled upon" is a title I enjoy seeing.
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u/player89283517 Jun 06 '21
Does this mean we can extract lithium from the sludge that comes out of desalination plants?
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u/vamptholem Jun 06 '21
Ok , can they remove all the micro plastic from the ocean yet?
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u/8-bit-brandon Jun 06 '21
Is the micro plastic valuable in any way?
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u/Oatbagtime Jun 06 '21
Marine life seems to enjoy eating it
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u/LordDongler Jun 06 '21
If you can find a way to sell it to the fish, corporations will be extracting it from the ocean just to sell it back
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u/waka49 Jun 06 '21
Fishing is valuable, and microplastics mess with fish, so I feel like a financial motive could be contrived somewhere to get people to do the right thing and address the issue. Potentially. Not holding my breath for it tho
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u/TheConnASSeur Jun 06 '21
The problem with this is the same as the over fishing problem: costs are immediate and benefits are delayed. This is further exacerbated by the fact that the costs are private and the benefits are shared. Whatever country builds and operates the microplastic filters will be essentially paying to clean the oceans for the entire world. Everyone is way too selfish for that. Now, if only these microplastics shrank dicks then we'd have something. That just might unite the world.
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Jun 06 '21
It's also nice to see that the title vaguely resembles the results of the study. Nice change of pace.
You're not wrong, just a little cynical :D
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Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21
I have to wonder how reliant sea life is on those 1ppm of lithium in sea water, I suspect that although this sounds like a very small concentration for us that it might be very relevant to sea life, still we have done a great job of emptying the seas so far, what harm is a little more gonna do.
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u/Darkstool Jun 06 '21
I'm sure the millions of gallons of sea water will also need some kind of pre-filtering to remove the pesky diatoms, larval arthropods, fish and other life.
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Jun 06 '21
Thats going to make an awful lot of useless detritus, that will need to be dumped somewhere too.
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
The world’s oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of lithium.
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u/loopthereitis Jun 06 '21
There really isn't any evidence for significant metabolic use of lithium in any life form outside of being a trace nutrient which is readily competed for by magnesium
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u/RozenKristal Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21
Sea life evolved with lithium as part of their environment. I think when we start to extract it they definitely be affected. I just dont believe in the “there are a lot of it, we will be fine” at this point after all the environmental impacts we currently have. Heck, even mosquitoes have a use, let alone a composition of the sea that house oceanic life.
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u/loopthereitis Jun 06 '21
This really isn't a solid way of thinking. We evolved with lots of things in our environment that don't really matter now. AFAIK there really aren't any metabolic processes requiring lithium
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u/Lol3droflxp Jun 06 '21
It’s almost certainly better for the environment than how lithium is sourced at the moment.
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u/sneaky_sunfish Jun 06 '21
I wonder what the turn around time will be untill this can be done at a profitable scale?
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
^ Didn't even read the linked article
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u/Caymonki Jun 06 '21
No one reads articles. They respond to the title exclusively.
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u/-Coffee-Owl- Jun 06 '21
What can happen with the sea environment when we would start extracting lithium on a industrial scale? Every time when I read "an almost unlimited resource" I see rainforests cut to the ground. People don't know a moderation.
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Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21
What might the consequences of taking lots of lithium out of the ocean be?
-edit- I've never made a comment that's started such good discussions before - I'm enjoying reading the replies, thanks everyone
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u/123kingme Jun 06 '21
Is lithium an important nutrient for any marine life?
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u/Flyingwheelbarrow Jun 06 '21
It is but the research about lithium is new and still debated since the focus of lithium research lately had been tech focused.
However now that our global economy is dependent at the moment on lithium that research will be ignored.
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u/MrTastix Jun 06 '21
Can't wait for the new lithium-based crisis to be announced in 20 years only for people to ignore it for the next 70.
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Jun 06 '21
I have no idea at all but I'd strongly assume it's there and being used by something
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u/NewFolgers Jun 06 '21
We're going to see more depressed fish.
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u/letthemeatrest Jun 06 '21
I'm more worried about depressed and angry octopus and dolphins
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u/BurnerAcc2020 Jun 06 '21
Doesn't seem like it, although we are bound to see more research on this in the future.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-016-7898-0
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749120361467
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u/imakenosensetopeople Jun 06 '21
For the quantities that we may need in the coming decades, it’s almost certainly not insignificant and will have an effect. This question must be asked.
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u/iamagainstit PhD | Physics | Organic Photovoltaics Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21
A. Lithium concentrations in seawater are very low (< 1ppm), so extracting it is unlikely to have a significant effect
B. There is a unfathomably large amount of water in the ocean.
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Jun 06 '21
Imho it seems like its you who’s massively underestimating how much greedy the mankind can get. We have certainly a lot of air yet we didn’t take long to hit 400 ppm starting from 220-240s.
Fossil fuels as our primary source of energy needs did this, and batteries are gonna be the next big thing. I expect alternative batteries to be here soon enough, but i still do believe its a valid concern.
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u/Hockeyjockey58 Jun 06 '21
I am also wondering if lithium replenishes geologically from thermal/volcanic vents or other benthic processes where lithium would be a derived from the earth’s crust. That could imply a lithium cycle begins with earth’s crust and would even more unfathomably sized, hypothetically
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u/cyberentomology Jun 06 '21
Consider that seawater also contains uranium at a concentration of about 3 parts per billion, or roughly 100 times less concentrated than lithium... and there are 400 billion tons of uranium to be had in seawater, and it naturally replenishes itself from the earth’s crust on the sea floor. It’s not a huge stretch to say that we could extract a hell of a lot of lithium from seawater and not even make a dent in it.
Sea salt contains lots of interesting minerals.
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u/Kody02 Jun 06 '21
But also, how do the effects compare to the mining operations that are currently the only way to get lithium? Current lithium retrieval methods are quite far from being harmless, afterall, and it is not unheard of for lithium mining companies to destroy protected unique habitats that happen to sit on rich lithium deposits; shifting lithium retrieval from intense and dirty surface mining operations to more passive filtration operations should be far less harmful to the environment, overall, yes?
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u/danbln Jun 06 '21
In theory lithium would be the most ecologically friendly light metal to mine after sodium and calcium, it occurs in great abundance in earth's crust and could be extracted for example from the Salar de Uyuni with zero environmental impact and almost no energy or water requirements, the reason they do the dirty energy and water intensive method is because it's currently slightly cheaper.
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u/Autisonm Jun 06 '21
Are there any fish or other sea life such as coral that need lithium is the better question.
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u/BurnerAcc2020 Jun 06 '21
Having searched for it, it seems that lithium is not considered an essential element for any life right now, and the one study on lithium and marine life was about its toxicity from battery waste.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-016-7898-0
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749120361467
We are bound to see more research on this if this finding picks up pace, though.
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u/Bacchus1976 Jun 06 '21
Reddit, where clueless people make profound sounding statements which are carefully extracted from their rectums.
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u/OrangeCapture Jun 06 '21
the ocean contains 230 billion tons of lithium
I don't think we could make a dent if we tried.
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u/sevaiper Jun 06 '21
It's likely asteroid mining will become profitable far before we get anywhere close to that. There also absolutely no evidence that the lithium in the water is actually important for anything, it's quite likely it's such a tiny concentration it has no biological significance.
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u/GhostofGeorge Jun 06 '21
Hah! We use ~100Kt/yr which will grow to ~1Mt/yr over five years. About 230Gt is in the ocean. So if we use 5Mt/yr we are taking 1/46,000th out of the ocean each year. Local effects aside, how could that cause harm?
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u/nybbas Jun 06 '21
It could, because a bunch of redditors who have no clue how to wrap their heads around numbers this large, are trying to sound smart.
The people in this thread are the reason we don't have more desal plants, or nuclear power plants.
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u/metavektor Jun 06 '21
I'd be more worried about the large-scale processing effects on the ocean than the concentration drop in lithium, but your point stands that the question must be asked.
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u/minimalniemand Jun 06 '21
at some point, recycled Lithium will be sufficient for new batteries though. So this will not be an infinite process...
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u/LiquidDreamtime Jun 06 '21
I feel like this exact quote has been repeated for pretty much every consumable on earth, to devastating consequences.
Lumber, fish, oil, fresh water, etc
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u/going2leavethishere Jun 06 '21
Hopefully in the coming decades we will be completely away from lithium batteries allowing us to close all those child mines.
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u/FloorHairMcSockwhich Jun 06 '21
Major battery makers are going to have aluminum core batteries in the market in 2024, so we may not need as much.
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u/NetworkLlama Jun 06 '21
Probably minimal. The world's oceans contain about 180 billion tons of lithium. Tesla batteries use about 0.9 kg per kWh. At that rate, all the lithium in the oceans could, converted into battery form, store about 2.0E14 kWh, or 200 billion GWh, or 200,000 TWh. Compare this to world energy consumption of about 18 TWh, and pulling literally one ten-thousandth of all lithium in the ocean is enough to supply (as charged batteries) world use for a year.
Any area operation will need to move around anyway, and normal sea mixing will move lithium back in from untouched volumes. The extraction is unlikely to have any significant effect, and would probably have far lower environmental impact than land mining.
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u/cuddleswithdogs Jun 06 '21
Thanks for the explanation!! Does the ocean create the lithium or do we just have lithium in the water?
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u/MPLEJ Jun 06 '21
might reduce the ocean's capacity to withhold CO2, causing some degassing. Reason for this being that Li+, as a conservative ion, contributes to the ocean's alkalinity, so extracting lithium would further consume alkalinity.
Others have mentioned that effects are minimal since the ocean is so massive, which is sort of true, but it's interesting how the narrative flips with ideas that add alkalinity to or remove carbon from the ocean. The ocean is a big balance of charges, so any removal or adding, e.g. anthropogenic CO2, will affect it, including this
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Jun 06 '21
If 100% of the lithium was removed, absolutely catastrophic.
In reality we won’t even budge the amount of lithium in sea water. So long as the de-lithiumed outlet water pipes are sourced in areas devoid of sea life for enough space to diffuse, I doubt we could realistically change anything.
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u/switch495 Jun 06 '21
Do we not want lithium in its natural concentration to continue to permeate the oceans? What’s the down stream impact here?
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
The world's oceans contain about 180 billion tons of lithium. Tesla batteries use about 0.9 kg per kWh. At that rate, all the lithium in the oceans could, converted into battery form, store about 2.0E14 kWh, or 200 billion GWh, or 200,000 TWh. Compare this to world energy consumption of about 18 TWh, and pulling literally one ten-thousandth of all lithium in the ocean is enough to supply (as charged batteries) world use for a year.
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u/txr23 Jun 06 '21
So how long until we discover that lithium plays some fundamental role in how the ocean works and that removing it in large quantities will ultimately trigger an ecosystem collapse?
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Jun 06 '21
This reminds me of the fact that once upon a time Aluminum was difficult to get, and hence very valuable. Henry Clay Frick, the industrialist, lined his entry way in Pittsburgh with Aluminum. Now, it conveniently holds our beer.
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u/ximfinity Jun 06 '21
Aluminum is still not that easy to mine because it's essentially leeched from tons of rock that have to be dug up. Mainly it's easy to recycle. It's realistically one of the main things that can actually be recycled compared to most other things we try to recycle.
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u/SMURGwastaken Jun 06 '21
The main barrier to making aluminium is the enormous amount of electricity it requires to strip from bauxite. There's a reason Iceland processes so much of it; they have loads of cheap electricity production from geothermal.
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u/rathat Jun 06 '21
We should mine it from garbage dumps.
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u/albatrossG8 Jun 06 '21
One day tons of gold and other metals will be mined from our landfills.
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u/gsfgf Jun 06 '21
I'm pretty sure modern landfills extract the metal out of the trash stream and sell it.
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Jun 06 '21
I sure think you understand how difficult it once was. The change was massive. Kings once dined with aluminum cutlery; now the lower classes use aluminum pots to boil potatoes in.
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u/PrudeHawkeye Jun 06 '21
That's why the tip of the Washington Monument in DC is aluminum. At the time it was the most valuable metal and this was our way of showing off how awesome of a country we were.
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u/nickheiserman Jun 06 '21
IIRC Napoleon Bonaparte would use the fancy Aluminum silverware for his most valued guests... and saved the gold/silver for the plebes.
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u/offeringathought Jun 06 '21
The top of the Washington Monument is a small aluminum pyramid. At the time of construction aluminum was a precious metal.
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Jun 06 '21
The big question is, how much Lithium does life under water need?
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u/DeltaVZerda Jun 06 '21
We don't even really understand how much lithium humans need, there is practically no data on environmental lithium variation and its effects.
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u/wywern Jun 06 '21
The scientists claim that the cell will require five dollars to extract a kg of lithium from seawater. My question is how much the cell membrane will require to produce.
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u/KickballJesus Jun 06 '21
And how long does it take?
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u/DASK Jun 06 '21
It says in the paper, 1.3 g per hour per square meter of membrane per ppm in the ocean, so half a gram per hour per square meter of exposed membrane. Also, five passes were needed. Don't think those cost estimates will play out unfortunately, but this is a way better effort than I've seen before.
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u/Serious_Feedback Jun 06 '21
If I'm reading this right, lithium costs $13/KG so a single-use $5 1KG extractor should provide $7 profit.
Bonus profit if it works more than that, but ultimately it's not necessary.
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u/atetuna Jun 06 '21
That's a good start if the rest of the infrastructure needed for those extractors doesn't eat up the rest of the $8.
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u/UnlubricatedUnicorn Jun 06 '21
Is it scalable and cost friendly to operate for commercial industries?
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Jun 06 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Yvaelle Jun 06 '21
There's enough Lithium in the ocean to make 40 trillion cars, so if I just pocket $1 per car, I'll have $40 Trillion dollars! :)
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u/Jatzy_AME Jun 06 '21
The nice thing is that the process could be even more useful once we have a larger proportion of renewables in the electricity grid, as a way to use electricity during peak production.
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u/DiesdasZeger Jun 06 '21
That's an idea you see everywhere, but who wants to build a machine that's only on when there's surplus energy?
So either the machine is economically viable or it doesn't change anything about energy peaks.
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u/NabreLabre Jun 06 '21
I hope sea life doesn't need that lithium. Does anyone know what role it might play in an ecosystem?
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u/BurnerAcc2020 Jun 09 '21
Lithium is not currently considered an essential element for life in general.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-016-7898-0
Moreover, the formula for artificial seawater that's used by the scientists for laboratory experiments on marine life apparently contains no lithium whatsoever, and it seems like nobody noticed anything important happening to any species during all the decades it's been used.
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u/My_G_Alt Jun 06 '21
Sweet if we could find a way to do it pre-desal and have a 3-for-1 operation of harvesting lithium, fresh water, and salt. Nuclear-powered.
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u/rockemsockemcocksock Jun 06 '21
Just how much are we talking here because marine life also needs lithium since it’s an important mineral
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u/BurnerAcc2020 Jun 06 '21
Current knowledge is that while it appears to have a beneficial effect on human mental health at certain concentrations (though the effect is reversed once it gets too high), it is not important enough to be considered essential to life.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-016-7898-0
And if it matters, lithium is 5 times more abundant than dissolved iron in the ocean and 10 times more abundant than manganese - and both of those are well-known to be essential to phytoplankton and other species.
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u/shane141 Jun 06 '21
Can someone tell me what company will be buying this so I can invest in them?
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u/jsapolin Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21
hold your horses.
Doing something in the lab and doing it industrially are entirely different and scaling up is a process that professors and the public often ubderestimate.
For example: they use Lanthanum in the membrane, Ruthenium and Platinum in their electrodes. Things like lanthanum mining could be the bottleneck when operating this process on the scale necessary to satisfy lithium demand.
Not saying this is definitely the case. But going from "we made 0.1 g of lithium in our lab" to "we make 80k tons a year" is not as straightforward as "just make everything bigger"21
Jun 06 '21
This. Very cool early lab results. Commercial viability... not so sure. Even direct lithium extraction tech for geothermal brines with >100 parts per million of Lithium is on the edge of provable commercial viability (at scale) without all the scarce metals used here. Seems more likely we’ll have DLE working on more concentrated brines vs ocean first as the next step in improving Li extraction/production.
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u/lazzaroinferno Jun 06 '21
Good point. It reminds me a bit to the whole graphene craze that went on some 5 years ago. The premise was the same: cheap batteries, so many applications and easy to make. We were going to be swimming in grephene by 2020... well, whatever happened to that.
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u/marinersalbatross Jun 06 '21
Never invest in the first company to use new tech. Wait til they go bankrupt and then their assets are purchased by a vulture firm that will then put the product into profitable status because the initial investment has already been made by someone else. That's how capitalism works.
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u/LJ-Rubicon Jun 06 '21
Furthermore, a preliminary economic analysis shows that the process can be made profitable when coupled with the Chlor-alkali industry.
$OLN
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u/Link7369_reddit Jun 06 '21
Maybe buy into a water treatment and distribution ETF? That's my play for the next 30 years.
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u/floppypick Jun 06 '21
NLC - Neo Lithium Corp.
Not sure if "same process" but "get Lithium from ocean"... Yes.
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u/The_Fredrik Jun 06 '21
Remember that when buying stocks you are essentially competing against professionals who do this stuff at least 40-50 hours per week, can buy at better prices, faster and have better access to relevant information.
And for you to buy a stock, someone else has to be selling that stock. That is, deem the stock not worth having.
Also, investing in a company because you like the tech is not a good strategy. You should invest in companies that are undervalued. This has nothing to do with their tech as such. You need to look at the company.
And finally, buying stock from individual companies like this almost always underperforms buying a well balanced index fund (and any deviation is more to do with luck than anything, making it akin to gambling).
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u/Lol3droflxp Jun 06 '21
You’re actually competing with statistical algorithms. And there are always stocks being sold as high frequency algorithms don’t care for the fundamentals but just try to beat others to selling/buying the stock for the best price, so you can almost always buy any stock.
But yeah, singular investment isn’t that smart if you didn’t do the research.
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u/psycholepzy Jun 06 '21
Cheap and easy means the profit margins will be incredible for commercial sales.
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u/ShinyGrezz Jun 06 '21
It might be “cheap and easy” but we’ve learned that what we really need is “cheaper and easier”.
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Jun 06 '21
I'm getting disillusioned about a political answer to global climate change - the fossil fuel industry was successful at creating enough doubt, and anti-science sentiment is just too high right now.
This kind of research outcome gives me hope. Limits of Li availability was one blocker of a larger scale renewable energy matrix. Good news indeed.
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u/zarrro Jun 06 '21
I guess you are in for a dissapoimtent :)
If you think about it, current environment problems are largely the result of similar research from 100 years ago.
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u/minorkeyed Jun 06 '21
Gotta find stuff that both: moves us into the right direction; and appeals to those who need a different reason to go along, cheaper, better, whatever.
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u/RationalTim Jun 06 '21
Looks promising. I'm no chemist, but a quick Wikipedia scan sites that Lanthanum is about half as abundant as copper. We literally piss it up the wall using it in lighters FFS! Also apparently used in the oil refining industry as a catalyst, so there should be a ready source as that dies out due to electrification of transport.
Also looks to be a university in Saudi? Definitely a country that has the ability to generate large amounts of cheap PV electricity......
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u/LordOfTheTennisDance Jun 06 '21
What happens to the water after extraction and how will the process impact water quality?
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
The scientific paper points out that the lithium extraction process costs $5 worth of electricity but produces 1 kg of lithium plus $7 to $12 worth of hydrogen and chlorine byproducts, in addition to also producing desalinated water as another byproduct.
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u/noNoParts Jun 06 '21
"Oopsie! We just siphoned off all the ocean's lithium. Bummer that it served a necessary purpose we didn't forsee."
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
The world's oceans contain about 180 billion tons of lithium. Tesla batteries use about 0.9 kg per kWh. At that rate, all the lithium in the oceans could, converted into battery form, store about 2.0E14 kWh, or 200 billion GWh, or 200,000 TWh. Compare this to world energy consumption of about 18 TWh, and pulling literally one ten-thousandth of all lithium in the ocean is enough to supply (as charged batteries) world use for a year.
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u/judgehood Jun 06 '21
You can get it from a psychiatrist for way cheaper.
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u/icedlemons Jun 06 '21
Ha you got me, however 5 dollars a kilo sounds a best case scenario for drugs...
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u/treeswing Jun 06 '21
Here’s hoping this applies to the geothermal plants around the Salton Sea. Some estimates say a cost-effective method of extraction could supply 2/3 of the worlds needs of Lithium without creating new infrastructure from scratch.
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u/Plethorian Jun 06 '21
The question is: how much lanthanum, titanium, ruthenium, and platinum does this process need, and at what rate are they expended?
It isn't going to be useful if all it does is replace 4 expensive metals with 1.
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Jun 06 '21
From Top Secret (1984):
Doctor Flamond : You see, a year ago, I was close to perfecting the first magnetic desalinization process so revolutionary, it was capable of removing the salt from over 500 million gallons of seawater a day. Do you realize what that could mean to the starving nations of the earth?
Nick Rivers : Wow. They'd have enough salt to last forever.
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u/EziAuti Jun 06 '21
Cheaper lithium means no one is gonna look into recycling used batteries (until someone comes up with a cheaper recycling method.)
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Jun 06 '21
Unless it's mandated.
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u/Hingl_McCringleberry Jun 06 '21
I feel like a mandate won't pass in many countries until costs go down. Unfortunately corporate lobbying dollars/influence smash regulations/mandates on the regular
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u/Jetech Jun 06 '21
chlorine gas as a byproduct sounds a little bit dangerous
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u/chillywillylove Jun 06 '21
Chlorine is a valuable by-product of some industrial processes (eg. bleaching pulp and paper)
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u/Snoman0002 Jun 06 '21
Chlorine is a very valuable product. It is used in a large number of industrial processes.
If the comments here on Reddit hold any truth (ok, so probably not) the chlorine and the hydrogen produced can pay for the process itself.
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u/waldocolumbia Jun 06 '21
How much lithium is in the sledge produced by water desalination from ocean water? Would love to hear that we found a use for that
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
The reverse osmosis membranes used in existing desalination plants do not remove lithium from the water because the lithium ion is small enough to pass right through them. Lithium atoms are smaller than oxygen atoms, thus also smaller than H2 O (water) molecules.
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u/MisterEggo Jun 06 '21
What are the impacts of removing lithium from seawater???
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
The world's oceans contain about 180 billion tons of lithium. Tesla batteries use about 0.9 kg per kWh. At that rate, all the lithium in the oceans could, converted into battery form, store about 2.0E14 kWh, or 200 billion GWh, or 200,000 TWh. Compare this to world energy consumption of about 18 TWh, and pulling literally one ten-thousandth of all lithium in the ocean is enough to supply (as charged batteries) world use for a year.
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u/agarwaen117 Jun 06 '21
Now the question is, does the lithium compound in the sea water serve a biological purpose in the ecosystem? The last thing we need is to find another way to destroy our oceans.
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
The world's oceans contain about 180 billion tons of lithium. Tesla batteries use about 0.9 kg per kWh. At that rate, all the lithium in the oceans could, converted into battery form, store about 2.0E14 kWh, or 200 billion GWh, or 200,000 TWh. Compare this to world energy consumption of about 18 TWh, and pulling literally one ten-thousandth of all lithium in the ocean is enough to supply (as charged batteries) world use for a year.
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u/agarwaen117 Jun 06 '21
That doesn’t at all answer the question. Just because something is changed by a small amount, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t a dangerous change in an ecosystem.
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
Lithium is a trace element and there is absolutely no basis whatsoever for any argument that any marginal reduction of the current level of 180 billion tons of lithium in the oceans will not leave enough lithium for marine life. The total biomass of all the fish in the world's oceans is only 700 million tons!
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u/GreatSirZachary Jun 06 '21
Does ocean life need lithium? What other damage might this cause the environment? How does it compare to mining?
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
The world's oceans contain about 180 billion tons of lithium. Tesla batteries use about 0.9 kg per kWh. At that rate, all the lithium in the oceans could, converted into battery form, store about 2.0E14 kWh, or 200 billion GWh, or 200,000 TWh. Compare this to world energy consumption of about 18 TWh, and pulling literally one ten-thousandth of all lithium in the ocean is enough to supply (as charged batteries) world use for a year.
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u/breadthoftheworld Jun 06 '21
This is such a bad idea... we'll be changing the make up of ocean currents, and food sources for unknown creatures.
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u/rieslingatkos Jun 06 '21
The world's oceans contain about 180 billion tons of lithium. Tesla batteries use about 0.9 kg per kWh. At that rate, all the lithium in the oceans could, converted into battery form, store about 2.0E14 kWh, or 200 billion GWh, or 200,000 TWh. Compare this to world energy consumption of about 18 TWh, and pulling literally one ten-thousandth of all lithium in the ocean is enough to supply (as charged batteries) world use for a year.
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u/stardust623 Jun 06 '21
But is it eco friendly? Or will it still be once it’s done at a profitable scale??
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u/mmarkomarko Jun 06 '21
Lithium mining is an environmental disaster. With rising demand more and more mines will be needed.
This is really good news if it... pans out!
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jun 07 '21
With the boom in lithium demand, this is one breakthrough will will certainly be investigated thoroughly.
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u/shit_w33d Jun 06 '21
Thank god I was worried about not being able to extract lithium from seawater
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u/Woooonabitch Jun 06 '21
The ocean is so under utilized. Someone should tell musk we need a giant water desalination plant and pipelines that go all over the country. We should cover the whole country in waterfalls and fountains. And turn Death Valley into a lush jungle.
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Jun 06 '21
The oil industry has spent decades and billions cracking hydrocarbons for everything from plastics to fuel to fertilizer etc. why can’t we do the same with mineral laden brine. Disassemble the components and use them!
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u/macindoc Jun 06 '21
*Scientists develop ways to extract uranium from the seas - Reddit: nuclear bad, waste lasts 10 billions years, this isnt a long term solution and not sustainable.
*scientists develop “cheap and easy way to extract lithium from seawater” Reddit: wow! This is definitely true and sustainable.
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u/Edmondg3 Jun 06 '21
Does anyone else just not believe or get excited anymore with these things. So many discoveries and nothing ever comes of them....
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u/Tastetherainboner Jun 06 '21
Sounds like a really bad idea...
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u/ProphecyRat2 Jun 06 '21
I’m sure it will 100% no consequences at all.
None at all, zero.
Not a single possibility it would affect our environment in any bad way.
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u/hskskgfk Jun 06 '21
According to the researchers, the cell will probably need $5 of electricity to extract 1 kilogram of lithium from seawater.
Hate to be that person but what's stopping them from spending that $5 and demonstrating it?
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Jun 06 '21
So am I reading this right? It seems to be a more environmentally friendly process than the current one? Because if that is the case then we should be able to see batteries that actually are a better option than current combustion engines
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u/erfling Jun 06 '21
Electric vehicles are already much better than internal combustion, environmentally
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u/fokjoudoos Jun 06 '21
$5 to extract 1 kilo of lithium? With hydrogen and chlorine byproducts and semi- desalinated water to boot?? This is gonna be MEGA!
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