7 ms·

There's nore lithium in the ocean than anywhere else, it just isn't concentrated. I wonder if there's an opportunity for a combined seawater desalinisation and

There's nore lithium in the ocean than anywhere else, it just isn't concentrated. I wonder if there's an opportunity for a combined seawater desalinisation and lithium extraction plant, if they could have complementary processes.

inflatableDodo 7y ago
https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/ https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-...
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  Interesting page, thanks for sharing. Relevant citation from the page: > This approach leverages desalination waste streams rather than virgin seawater. This is because seawater desalination plants typically leverage RO, which produces both a purified water stream and a reject stream consisting of a concentrated brine solution. Reject streams are typically discharged to the sea, however, it is possible to recover lithium and other materials from the RO reject brine. This is typically accomplished via a multistep process involving the sequential application of chemical reactants to adsorb, desorb, and crystallize the lithium (or other desired constituents) in the brine. The precipitated salt is then filtered and the brine discharged.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    Makes sense to reuse the concentrated brine; IIRC that stuff is causing a lot of problems due to a huge local spike in salt (and other stuff) content of the water.
    - inflatableDodo 7y ago
      Does this cause you any problems when it seeps down into R'lyeh?
- myself248 7y ago
  Thank you! I've been pondering this idea for ages, and I'm glad to see it's being looked into.
austincheney 7y ago
Similarly aluminum is the most abundant mineral on Earth's surface, but aluminum is only harvested from bauxite rock formations. The highest concentration of gold on the planet is thought to reside just off the continental shelf next to California, but this is never harvested because scraping the ocean floor for trace metals is too expensive. Density and costs of extraction matter. The primary problem is hypocrisy. Environmentalists don't want a metal harvested from their backyard, but require it be harvested elsewhere at equal environmental impact. The options are clear: be content with atmospheric carbon, trade atmospheric carbon for water polluting metal extraction, or stop using electricity.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  The primary problem is quite obviously the carbon lobby/climate change deniers, without which serious effort to rein in unchecked carbon emission would have started 30 years ago. Trying to blame some private individuals for the system failure we have lived through is pretty weird.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    Well no, that isn't the primary problem. The carbon lobby wants to keep coal plants, but the alternative currently involves what the linked article is about - battery production, which produces a lot of waste as well. Other alternatives are windmills (visuals, kill a lot of birds), solar panels (hard to compensate their energy production with the energy required to make them), nuclear power (the US has a huge nuclear waste problem), etc. It's a compromise. It's replacing one evil with another. It's more a matter of where you draw the line; I for example am in favor of nuclear energy because the waste product, while extremely dangerous for tens of thousands of years, is in a neat and relatively compact package, instead of blown out into the atmosphere. But I digress; the only real solution is population and economic decrease. That's unlikely to happen unless something catastrophic happens, but that is the only way without replacing one bad thing with another.
    - Aromasin 7y ago

inflatableDodo 7y ago

https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/ https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-...

newnewpdro 7y ago
Interesting page, thanks for sharing. Relevant citation from the page: > This approach leverages desalination waste streams rather than virgin seawater. This is because seawater desalination plants typically leverage RO, which produces both a purified water stream and a reject stream consisting of a concentrated brine solution. Reject streams are typically discharged to the sea, however, it is possible to recover lithium and other materials from the RO reject brine. This is typically accomplished via a multistep process involving the sequential application of chemical reactants to adsorb, desorb, and crystallize the lithium (or other desired constituents) in the brine. The precipitated salt is then filtered and the brine discharged.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Makes sense to reuse the concentrated brine; IIRC that stuff is causing a lot of problems due to a huge local spike in salt (and other stuff) content of the water.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    Does this cause you any problems when it seeps down into R'lyeh?
myself248 7y ago
Thank you! I've been pondering this idea for ages, and I'm glad to see it's being looked into.

austincheney 7y ago

Similarly aluminum is the most abundant mineral on Earth's surface, but aluminum is only harvested from bauxite rock formations. The highest concentration of gold on the planet is thought to reside just off the continental shelf next to California, but this is never harvested because scraping the ocean floor for trace metals is too expensive. Density and costs of extraction matter. The primary problem is hypocrisy. Environmentalists don't want a metal harvested from their backyard, but require it be harvested elsewhere at equal environmental impact. The options are clear: be content with atmospheric carbon, trade atmospheric carbon for water polluting metal extraction, or stop using electricity.

SiempreViernes 7y ago
The primary problem is quite obviously the carbon lobby/climate change deniers, without which serious effort to rein in unchecked carbon emission would have started 30 years ago. Trying to blame some private individuals for the system failure we have lived through is pretty weird.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Well no, that isn't the primary problem. The carbon lobby wants to keep coal plants, but the alternative currently involves what the linked article is about - battery production, which produces a lot of waste as well. Other alternatives are windmills (visuals, kill a lot of birds), solar panels (hard to compensate their energy production with the energy required to make them), nuclear power (the US has a huge nuclear waste problem), etc. It's a compromise. It's replacing one evil with another. It's more a matter of where you draw the line; I for example am in favor of nuclear energy because the waste product, while extremely dangerous for tens of thousands of years, is in a neat and relatively compact package, instead of blown out into the atmosphere. But I digress; the only real solution is population and economic decrease. That's unlikely to happen unless something catastrophic happens, but that is the only way without replacing one bad thing with another.
  - Aromasin 7y ago