20 ms·

Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lithium from seawater

496 points by sambeau 5y ago

_Microft 5y ago
Adding another solution to the issue of mining lithium for batteries at scale is awesome, I hope they find a way to deal with the brine that this produces (Edit: it does not really produce brine in the classical sense according to the paper [0]). Maybe this process could be a way to deal with brine from seawater desalination [1] by at least removing lithium ions from the waste water. Since the ion concentration in the waste water is higher than in seawater, it should theoretically make the lithium separation process easier, shouldn't it? Another thing: combining this with cheap solar power and seawater lithium mining might be a part of a possible solution for a post-oil industry in the Gulf States? They did the tests on Red Sea seawater which has a higher salinity than most other seawater but apparantly the eastern Mediterranean matches or even surpasses that [2]. [0] "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", from page 5, (PDF) https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ee/d1ee00354b https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ee/d1ee00354... [1] I am not linking to a particular article but this is what I am talking about: https://www.google.de/search?q=toxic+brine+seawater+drinking+water https://www.google.de/search?q=toxic+brine+seawater+drinking... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinity#/media/File:WOA09_sea-surf_SAL_AYool.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinity#/media/File:WOA09_sea...
- sandworm101 5y ago
  It depends. There is chemistry here too, not just physical membranes. Higher concentrations of everything else might interfere with only getting at the lithium.
- scythe 5y ago
  You can obtain a few things from desalination brines. Magnesium is the most plentiful, besides salt, of course. There's also some sulfur, bromine and boron that might be worth recovering. It's mostly theoretical, of course.
- AYBABTME 5y ago
  The concern over brine is something I'm willing to contemplate but on the face of it, it seems to me that brine would only be a problem in the immediate zone where it is returned. And then again the fresh water produced along with the brine will end up back in mostly the same surrounding after it gets used, so it's not like we're producing saltier and saltier water over time? So aside from the increased salinity at the specific location where the brine is returned to the sea, is there another issue? Am I missing something that makes all this a large scale problem?
  - mikeyouse 5y ago
    Not necessarily a “large scale” problem but the increased salinity means you create a enormous dead zone near your output system unless you spend a ton of energy to mitigate it. We had Bechtel design us a desalination/RO system for a biofuel startup I worked with and to prevent the dead zone, you need a massive system of buried pipes in the ocean. Iirc, it was the most expensive part of the entire design since you need to output it over something like a square kilometer and you need to mix in fresh seawater at several points to dilute the effluent before you release it. So in addition to the CapEx of a construction project in a horribly hostile environment, you have permanent energy consumption even past the filters. And of course, since it’s coastal, there are tons of regulations and government bodies interested in making sure you don’t cut corners.
    - hasmanean 5y ago
      Wow, most people never consider the dead-zone around desalination plants. Us landlubbers just think of it as manna from heaven, “free freshwater.” The way we discuss technical solutions is woefully inadequate. Everything is still presented as a miracle-cure for our problems. We should have a more mature understanding of how these things are constructed and maintained.
      - goldenkey 5y ago
        The ocean is pretty big. That's why fish poop and pee in it. Not much of a problem. And if you weren't already aware, did you know plants also excrete waste through their roots? I only found out recently. But yes, all waste needs to be spread out and able to diffuse into the large atmosphere or it causes dead zones.
- benevol 5y ago
  The solutions described are not the ultimate ones, yet. The real solution will be to: "Make salt magnetic and pull it out of the water, in real-time, with electro-magnets." https://audio.kryon.com/en/What's%20Wrong%20Today.mp3 https://audio.kryon.com/en/What's%20Wrong%20Today.mp3 (start the audio at 18:20, for the gist and some more details)
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    It's one of those "hipster" podcasts by the UI designer at _that_ startup: https://whats-wrong-with-the-podcast.simplecast.com/ https://whats-wrong-with-the-podcast.simplecast.com/ "Make oxygen magnetic and then just pull it out of water to produce hydrogen" I too like to fantasize. :-)
    - Forbo 5y ago
      What's wrong with the link? :-P > "Unconfigured Simplecast Domain You are seeing this page because your website is not configured properly."
      - goldenkey 5y ago
        It couldn't deal with HN traffic I guess. Here's a cache link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ImywwLhoQwgJ:https://whats-wrong-with-the-podcast.simplecast.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ImywwL...
    - robocat 5y ago
      > Make oxygen magnetic and then just pull it out of water Liquid oxygen is paramagnetic and it is attracted to a magnet. https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae493.cfm https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae493.cfm Disclaimer: Sorry if that was what you were alluding to... the person on the GP's audio clip was too annoying for me to waste time listening to it.
      - goldenkey 5y ago
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Would there even be any brine? If they take out the lithium but don't take any water out (remix everything other than lithium) then the net effect on salinity would be almost nothing. It would make economic sense to colocated, to also do freshwater extraction at the same facility, but the removal of the lithium would then be beside the point. I wonder if the process can work for other more valuable substances. Uranium from seawater has been done for a while now. This process might make it cheaper than mining. The world could change if every country with access to the sea can start extracting such things.
- brightball 5y ago
  Between this and the discovery of producing Graphene without mining, the future of battery tech should be really interesting. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-range-breakthrough-as-new-aluminum-ion-battery-charges-60-times-faster-than-lithium-ion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-ran...
rmason 5y ago
In Michigan there is a special class of mining known as injection wells where they force water into wells and extract either salt or potassium fertilizer. Makes me wonder if they could extract lithium as a byproduct of this process?
- orwin 5y ago
  Its hard to say as the process is not described well. It seems to be, but i know that this kind of article is obscure on purpose to let readers imagine all kind of applications.
- swader999 5y ago
  This is being attempted with lithium as well: https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/meet-the-company-thats-looking-to-mine-lithium-from-albertas-old-oil-and-gas-wells https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/meet-the-compan...
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
This is amazing development taking in consideration how devastating classic lithium mining can be for surrounding nature. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environmen... At the same time by this method lithium it can become available almost for all countries on the planet (minus 45 that do not have sea).
- clcaev 5y ago
  If only the price if lithium mined in these ways included the a tax for these environmental externalities.
  - FranchuFranchu 5y ago
    I don't think Argentina, Chile, or Bolivia's governments will increase taxes on the people their bribes come from.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  The actual footprint of lithium mining is absolutely tiny compared to pretty much any other metal in demand. Iron, copper, and aluminum mining have left giant gaping scars in the earth that are thousands of times larger than anything anyone has even proposed doing for lithium. And that's before we start to talk about surface coal mining, tar sands, and all the land that's been scraped flat for oil and gas exploration and production. Get some perspective on this by getting out of your house and looking around. Those photos in the article that are intended to shock me would amount to a single medium-scale table salt evaporation facility.
  - NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
    That looks like a fallacy reasoning. In the same way if we would compare any harm that is happening on our planet to let say: Solar system, galaxy or universe, combined with age of a star, so it would be negligible and therefore justifiable? Collateral damage is justifiable unless you are not that damage isn't it? Better reasoning could begin with the question: would I leave my comfortable home, go there, and live there in community where water is contaminated by lithium mining sludge. Would I drink that water every day? Is there anyone who is suffering so I could enjoy comfortable life?
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I remember reading a story like this a few years ago. I think, in that case, it was about rare earth minerals. Don’t get me wrong; I really want this to work, but until the extraction plant gets built and is producing at scale, I won’t hold my breath.
Taniwha 5y ago
$5 a kilogram from seawater seems almost magical, I look forwards to the actual proof.
- adrian_b 5y ago
  $5 per kg for the electricity expenses is far from magical, but it should be low enough to make the extraction profitable. I do not know the current price of lithium, because most previous information sources, like the metal exchanges, no longer make their data public. Nevertheless, a few years ago lithium was around $66 per kg. So $5 would be just about 7.5% of the price per kg, but there are a lot of other costs, like replacing from time to time the expensive LLTO ceramic membrane and the very expensive Pt-Ru coated cathode and also many other operational costs and the amortization of the investment. For reversible batteries, the conversion of lithium phosphate to another lithium salt might be enough, but for applications that need metallic lithium, like primary batteries or Li-Al alloys, the lithium phosphate must be converted into lithium chloride or other suitable salt and the metallic lithium must be extracted by electrolysis, with additional, higher, costs for electric energy. However, the method described is sound and there are also useful byproducts to ensure or increase the profit. The method is not new, but the major achievement is finding a suitable material for the selective membrane, which passes lithium but blocks the much more abundant sodium & potassium. Unlike many such announcements, this appears to have good chances to eventually be used for lithium extraction.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    > the very expensive Pt-Ru coated cathode The Pt-Ru is just a catalyst, no? Maybe it gets contaminated but it would hopefully be recycled. Might even go up in value over time rather than be consumed.
baybal2 5y ago
Well, that $5 per kg is highly dependent on purity. If they get chemical grade lithium without extra steps, it might well be cheaper than "mining"
- rasz 5y ago
  Extracting from the sea might be more ecological than mining.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Tade0 5y ago
To put the amount of lithium in seawater in perspective: Just 2% of that would be enough to create storage capable of holding a year's worth of the world's electricity consumption.
- mac01021 5y ago
  2% of what? All the lithium in the world's oceans?
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    2 % of 0.2 ppm of the entire ocean is helluva lot of stuff. On the order of a cubic kilometer in volume.
- jokoon 5y ago
  I wonder, what's the cost of lithium in battery making? I've seen a video of how smartphone batteries are made, it's pretty advanced...
  - Tade0 5y ago
    There's around 160-200g of lithium in 1 kWh of batteries, meanwhile lithium costs ~$13.50/kg, so in 1 kWh there's around $2.70 worth of lithium.
    - jokoon 5y ago
      My question was rather "does it really make batteries cheaper?".
      - Tagbert 5y ago
        Maybe somewhat but what it mostly does is allow for more batteries to be made without driving up the cost of materials.
orwin 5y ago
I really hope this is not something like the false joy i had when it was said we were able to remove ligogen from hardwood completely and that the carbon structure was almost as strong as steel. Three years later, i'm still waiting for it :/
- crubier 5y ago
  You must be young, or only started reading about science in mainstream media recently. The kind of false joy you are talking about has been my constant pain for like 25years. You just have to understand that « scientific paper hyped up in mainstream media » != « new technology entering the market ».
  - gameswithgo 5y ago
    Every now and then it happens. e-ink being the example I remember as a kid. It happened!
tlb 5y ago
To extract 1 kg from 0.2 ppm seawater, you need to process 5e6 kg of water. $5 of electricity at $0.09/kWh is 200 MJ, which is enough to pump that much water 40 m high, or push it through a membrane with 4 bar pressure drop. So you can't do very much to seawater at that price point. Like many "scientists develop cheap ___" headlines, it may just cover part of the process and not the whole operation.
- ArkanExplorer 5y ago
  If you can piggyback on desalinization of water, some of this process becomes 'free'. I wonder if we are wasting valuable brine as part of our established desalinization processes?
  - muyuu 5y ago
    whoa I was making the exact same point simultaneously in a sibling comment
  - redsummer 5y ago
    Isn’t Lithium an anti-depressant? If it’s extracted from drinking water, won’t you end up with miserable people?
    - beowulfey 5y ago
      OP you replied to was saying the remnant waste brine from desalination may contain valuable lithium.
    - swader999 5y ago
      Just pirates and fisherman would be affected but they are salty to begin with.
      - failwhaleshark 5y ago
        No we're not, you bloody idiot! Returns to mending nets and counting seagulls.
dsomers 5y ago
But won’t this make the fish sad?!
- sidm83 5y ago
  This need more upvotes lol
  - Sabinus 5y ago
    Please don't. I like that this place isn't reddit.
    - Yajirobe 5y ago
      But you people visit Reddit as well. Is this your alter ego on HN? Why not behave the same way you do in other communities, why put on a mask for the HN folks?
      - belter 5y ago
        I think its about keeping one place for meaningful discussion and other for meme creation.
      - wruza 5y ago
        you people visit Reddit as well That’s a generalization, not everyone visits reddit.
      - jamestnz 5y ago
        > Is this your alter ego on HN? Come now, let's not be obtuse. People naturally behave differently in different social contexts, a thing that is totally normal and expected. For instance, consider how you'd behave in a professional situation, vs when drinking with your friends, vs when catching up with your grandmother. Having different standards in different online communities seems no different.
        Yajirobe 5y ago
AYBABTME 5y ago
Did I get this right: the primary process is basically an LTO battery where salt-water sits behind the LTO's membrane, and when the battery is "charged", the Lithium ions are "sucked" into the battery-side's electrolyte by osmosis? Not a chemist so I'm just trying to see if I grokked it. If I did, then this is remarkably simple!
- kortex 5y ago
  That's my read on it. It's kinda obvious when you frame it that way. Use a substrate which limits the ion size and apply an electric field.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Sounds similar to what EnergyX is doing: https://energyx.com/technology/#lithium-refinery https://energyx.com/technology/#lithium-refinery They built technology to separate lithium from brine that has high concentrations of it. Their short term plan is to test this in Bolivia where lithium is currently being mined by evaporating water in basins (using the sun). This takes huge amounts of water and a lot of time. This would potentially be a lot more efficient. The same company is also working on solid state batteries. Doing the same with sea water would just require pumping a lot of water, I imagine. If you are desalinating that, you'd end up with a brine with relatively high concentrations of salt, lithium, etc. Same for hydrogen production. So, not the worst idea to do something productive with that brine (as opposed to dumping it back in the sea).
Zenst 5y ago
"This means that the value of hydrogen and chlorine produced by the cell would end up offsetting the cost of power, and residual seawater could also be used in desalination plants to provide freshwater." Yes if you run electrodes in water you get Oxygen and Hydrogen at the respective electrodes. Add salt as you get in seawater and you get Hydrogen and Chlorine. Is the demand for Chlorine that high? [EDIT ADD] YES, it is and thank you for the replies, the epoxy one I had no idea (never even thought about it even).
- _Microft 5y ago
  The global demand for chlorine is 25-30 times as high as the amount of chlorine they would expect to produce when replacing all current lithium production with their process.
- imtringued 5y ago
  You need chlorine to produce epoxy so yes it's pretty high.
- flying_kiwi 5y ago
  Yes. Chlorine is used in many industrial processes and as a base material for a lot of things, including PVC plastic.
andrewfromx 5y ago
makes me think of https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/project-natick-underwater-datacenter/ https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/project-natick... and using the "wasted" heat those servers generate to do something with seawater like extract lithium or just salt and make fresh drinking water?
antattack 5y ago
It appears that this method is more profitable than mining Bitcoin if electricity cost is >.03/kWh and Lithium $10/kg.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  Too bad you get any GPUs, guess electric car will have to wait.
belter 5y ago
I am not sure, but sadly, it seems the reduction in carbon footprint from EVs is nullified by the expanded carbon emissions from lithium mining: http://blog.gorozen.com/blog/exploring-lithium-ion-electric-vehicles-carbon-footprint http://blog.gorozen.com/blog/exploring-lithium-ion-electric-...
- belter 5y ago
  It seems many of you do not agree, so please give me the benefit of the doubt and review some data points: "Effects of battery manufacturing on electric vehicle life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions" https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life-cycle-GHG_ICCT-Briefing_09022018_vF.pdf https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life... "Analysis of the climate impact of lithium-ion batteries and how to measure it" https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publications/2019_11_Analysis_CO2_footprint_lithium-ion_batteries.pdf https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat... "Climate explained: the environmental footprint of electric versus fossil cars" https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmental-footprint-of-electric-versus-fossil-cars-124762 https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmen...
  - philipkglass 5y ago
    Two of these citations undermine your original claim that "the reduction in carbon footprint from EVs is nullified by the expanded carbon emissions from lithium mining." https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmental-footprint-of-electric-versus-fossil-cars-124762 https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmen... says So on the basis of recent studies, fossil-fueled cars generally emit more than electric cars in all phases of a life cycle. and https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publications/2019_11_Analysis_CO2_footprint_lithium-ion_batteries.pdf https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat... says Overall, electric vehicles typically have much lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions than a typical car in Europe, even when assuming relatively high battery manufacturing emissions. The first link does not appear to directly compare internal combustion vehicles against battery electric vehicles.
odyssey7 5y ago
Does somebody know the environmental impact of this? Would the lithium concentration in seawater become meaningfully lower, and if so have we verified that organisms aren’t dependent on it?
- mot0rola 5y ago
  Had the same thought, are there repercussions?
- amelius 5y ago
  The solution is simple: just dump used batteries back into the ocean :) Just kidding, of course.
  - Forbo 5y ago
    Oddly enough, there's a meme about this (although it's lead-acid rather than lithium)... https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/throwing-car-batteries-into-the-ocean https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/throwing-car-batteries-into-t...
- jpalomaki 5y ago
  Two snippets from the Google search for scale: "The world's oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of lithium" "Lithium mines produced an estimated global total of 82,000 metric tons of lithium in 2020"
  - amelius 5y ago
    So even after 100 years of extraction, the effect would still be less than 0.005%.
    - lolsal 5y ago
      We don't have a good idea of how this new method will scale, or how demand will scale once this cheaper method gets going. It's hard to speculate accurately I think.
- 5y ago
mongol 5y ago
Could this be done far away at sea, perhaps close to oil and gas platforms?
mattmaroon 5y ago
I can already see the 2050 headlines: fish populations rapidly depleting from lithium deprivation.
- xbar 5y ago
  Nice! You predict fish remain in 2050!
hypnoscripto 5y ago
How does this compare to current prices?
twobitshifter 5y ago
A really cool example of lithium from seawater is underway on the Salton Sea using geothermal plants. The water in the Salton Sea is incredible high in lithium and there’s enough there to supply the demand for US EVs. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/28/990867075/californias-white-gold-rush-lithium-in-demand-amid-surge-in-electric-vehicles https://www.npr.org/2021/04/28/990867075/californias-white-g... I believe there’s a few startups rushing to get there first.
- kilroy123 5y ago
  I think this is a far better idea. This is the first time I'm hearing about this.
- hypnoscripto 5y ago
  Salton Sea is one of the most disgusting and hazardous places in the USA. I’m glad something good can come of it. Hopefully profits will be used for remediation and cleanup.
venkaesh 5y ago
Head start
williesleg 5y ago
Another way to kill the oceans. So pissed china pumps tons of crap there, and their massive ships with all that fossil fuels putting their emissions into the oceans, killing the reefs. Now we steal the oceans lithium. Wtf you people, all loving to kill the oceans. Stop it now.
plankers 5y ago
Soon: a global reduction of lithium levels in seawater makes fish more aggressive.
cronix 5y ago
I just wonder if any creature depends on the lithium levels being what they currently are to survive. It seems we're great at discovering X but at the expense of the unknown Y and by the time we discover the problem in Y, it's too late to fix it. And now we have also have a problem with Z caused by Y.
- whiddershins 5y ago
  In other comment above, quick math shows the scale of this concern ends up being completely off. The oceans are just so much bigger than we can easily conceptualize. So very much bigger.
  - cronix 5y ago
    > The oceans are just so much bigger than we can easily conceptualize. So very much bigger. Yes, so big in fact that at one time we didn't think that little 'ol mankind could alter it, just like the rest of the planet. What does raising the ocean temp by a measly 1-2 degrees do to thousands of different plants and animals in the sea? Did we know that 100 years ago? These very large complex systems aren't as immune to small changes as we once thought and often cascade into other systems.
    - whiddershins 5y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27412684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27412684
hourislate 5y ago
The Japanese seem to have a head start on this process. Article from 2016. https://www.miningweekly.com/article/over-40-minerals-and-metals-contained-in-seawater-their-extraction-likely-to-increase-in-the-future-2016-04-01/rep_id:3650 https://www.miningweekly.com/article/over-40-minerals-and-me... Last year, researchers at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s Rokkasho Fusion Institute revealed that they had developed a new way of extracting lithium from seawater. This involves dialysis. It employs a dialysis cell containing a membrane made from a superconducting material. Lithium is the only ion in the seawater that can pass through the membrane. It moves from the negative electrode side of the cell to the positive electrode side. They reported that the system displayed good energy efficiency and that it would be easy to scale it up. However, they also cautioned that the process is years away from being commercialized.
- dtgriscom 5y ago
  We're nowhere near materials that superconduct above water's freezing point (even salt water); how could this work?
  - hourislate 5y ago
    There are many criteria by which superconductors are classified. Superconductor material classes include chemical elements (e.g. mercury or lead), alloys (such as niobium–titanium, germanium–niobium, and niobium nitride), ceramics (YBCO and magnesium diboride), superconducting pnictides (like fluorine-doped LaOFeAs) or organic superconductors (fullerenes and carbon nanotubes; though perhaps these examples should be included among the chemical elements, as they are composed entirely of carbon).[12][13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity
  - _Microft 5y ago
    The answer seems to be that it is a misnomer or at least bad choice of name. They talk about (lithium) ionic superconductors at each occurence of the term superconductor which makes me think that they actually mean materials that only let lithium ions through but not others (because this is how their device actually works). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011916414006560 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001191641... (Open Access)
yuvalr1 5y ago
What would the sea corals say about us taking their lithium away? Do they even like lithium? Maybe we're doing them a favor.
nimbius 5y ago
From the perspective of a diesel engine tech, this is a controversial opinion, but I'm absolutely glad to see this breakthrough. Lithium is a conflict resource. its scarce, its hard to mine, and as a result so far electric cars are a fanciful plaything for what i would consider "the rich." This paves the way for electric cars that a working class mom and dad can afford to get to and from work and the store. and of course electric trucks that have obscene amounts of torque means never "getting stuck" behind a slow truck ever again. it also means cleaner cities and hopefully cheaper trucking for over the road drivers and owner/operators. Ive told my coworkers and apprentices this for as long as i can remember: expect to service elecric long-haul trucks in your lifetime. Learn the powertrain, the dynamics, the performance characteristics and keep pace with the technology as it evolves. Make it part of your expectation in the future, because the economic model of diesel is a last-ditch effort at best in the 21st century.
- coding123 5y ago
  Just throwing this out there, but a lot of working class contractor type drive a RAM/Ford/Chevy 1 ton class diesel trucks with mega cab that typically runs in the neighborhood of 50-70k, so these people WILL transition to electric. I already know republican types in rural areas that even want to get the Cybertruck (even if it means looking like one of those rich types).
  - jwolfe 5y ago
    > I already know republican types in rural areas that even want to get the Cybertruck (even if it means looking like one of those rich types). Not entirely on topic, but I'm curious whether their interest will shift to the electric Ford truck.
    - pmorici 5y ago
      Anecdotally, I know someone who saw the Electric Hummer commercial during the Super Bowl earlier this year and it led him down a path that ended in him buying a Model Y a few weeks ago. Other players announcing vehicles that are years away from production is a net positive for Tesla sales. It's counter intuitive so not many people under stand that but it is definitely a thing from what I've observed. The mechanism is that you have these companies talking about electric vehicles which brings more attention to the coming change in technology and Tesla has a wider selection of best in class for the price electric vehicles than anyone else that you can buy right now and not wait.
amai 5y ago
See also New patented process to enable lithium extraction from geothermal in Germany: https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/new-patented-process-to-enable-lithium-extraction-from-geothermal-in-germany/ https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/new-patented-process-to-enabl...
ck2 5y ago
relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/678/ https://xkcd.com/678/
Animats 5y ago
They're still at the bench-top stage with this, from the pictures. This is something that ought to work, since lithium is commercially extracted from denser brines.[1] Extraction from seawater is quite possible but not yet cost-effective. So cost is the big question. This is the usual problem when articles announcing "cheap and easy" come from the surface-chemistry crowd. The authors write "a preliminary economic analysis shows that the process can be made profitable when coupled with the chlor-alkali industry." So they apparently want to run this off of the reject stream from a plant that extracts chlorine and sodium hydroxide from brine. Running this downstream of a chlor-alkali plant means somebody else already has a brine source and a way to get rid of all the rejected brine. This sort of thing is common. A lot of rare mineral extraction is done as part of a process that extracts a less-rare mineral. Profitability is going to turn on all the usual problems with membrane systems - how long does the membrane last, how often does it have to be backwashed, what parts in the system corrode, and similar routine engineering problems. That's usually the hard part. [1] https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/ https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-...
billiam 5y ago
It's a big deal, if just to provide a signal that lithium supply can be distributed in the future and mineralized, concentrated, and potentially politicized sources won't dominate. The biggest effect might be to chill R&D on alternative chemistries to lithium for motorized transport batteries as well as lithium recycling research.

496 points by sambeau 5y ago

Adding another solution to the issue of mining lithium for batteries at scale is awesome, I hope they find a way to deal with the brine that this produces (Edit: it does not really produce brine in the classical sense according to the paper [0]). Maybe this process could be a way to deal with brine from seawater desalination [1] by at least removing lithium ions from the waste water. Since the ion concentration in the waste water is higher than in seawater, it should theoretically make the lithium separation process easier, shouldn't it? Another thing: combining this with cheap solar power and seawater lithium mining might be a part of a possible solution for a post-oil industry in the Gulf States? They did the tests on Red Sea seawater which has a higher salinity than most other seawater but apparantly the eastern Mediterranean matches or even surpasses that [2]. [0] "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", from page 5, (PDF) https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ee/d1ee00354b https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ee/d1ee00354... [1] I am not linking to a particular article but this is what I am talking about: https://www.google.de/search?q=toxic+brine+seawater+drinking+water https://www.google.de/search?q=toxic+brine+seawater+drinking... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinity#/media/File:WOA09_sea-surf_SAL_AYool.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinity#/media/File:WOA09_sea...

sandworm101 5y ago
It depends. There is chemistry here too, not just physical membranes. Higher concentrations of everything else might interfere with only getting at the lithium.
scythe 5y ago
You can obtain a few things from desalination brines. Magnesium is the most plentiful, besides salt, of course. There's also some sulfur, bromine and boron that might be worth recovering. It's mostly theoretical, of course.
AYBABTME 5y ago
The concern over brine is something I'm willing to contemplate but on the face of it, it seems to me that brine would only be a problem in the immediate zone where it is returned. And then again the fresh water produced along with the brine will end up back in mostly the same surrounding after it gets used, so it's not like we're producing saltier and saltier water over time? So aside from the increased salinity at the specific location where the brine is returned to the sea, is there another issue? Am I missing something that makes all this a large scale problem?
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  Not necessarily a “large scale” problem but the increased salinity means you create a enormous dead zone near your output system unless you spend a ton of energy to mitigate it. We had Bechtel design us a desalination/RO system for a biofuel startup I worked with and to prevent the dead zone, you need a massive system of buried pipes in the ocean. Iirc, it was the most expensive part of the entire design since you need to output it over something like a square kilometer and you need to mix in fresh seawater at several points to dilute the effluent before you release it. So in addition to the CapEx of a construction project in a horribly hostile environment, you have permanent energy consumption even past the filters. And of course, since it’s coastal, there are tons of regulations and government bodies interested in making sure you don’t cut corners.
  - hasmanean 5y ago
    Wow, most people never consider the dead-zone around desalination plants. Us landlubbers just think of it as manna from heaven, “free freshwater.” The way we discuss technical solutions is woefully inadequate. Everything is still presented as a miracle-cure for our problems. We should have a more mature understanding of how these things are constructed and maintained.
    - goldenkey 5y ago
      The ocean is pretty big. That's why fish poop and pee in it. Not much of a problem. And if you weren't already aware, did you know plants also excrete waste through their roots? I only found out recently. But yes, all waste needs to be spread out and able to diffuse into the large atmosphere or it causes dead zones.
benevol 5y ago
The solutions described are not the ultimate ones, yet. The real solution will be to: "Make salt magnetic and pull it out of the water, in real-time, with electro-magnets." https://audio.kryon.com/en/What's%20Wrong%20Today.mp3 https://audio.kryon.com/en/What's%20Wrong%20Today.mp3 (start the audio at 18:20, for the gist and some more details)
- goldenkey 5y ago
  It's one of those "hipster" podcasts by the UI designer at _that_ startup: https://whats-wrong-with-the-podcast.simplecast.com/ https://whats-wrong-with-the-podcast.simplecast.com/ "Make oxygen magnetic and then just pull it out of water to produce hydrogen" I too like to fantasize. :-)
  - Forbo 5y ago
    What's wrong with the link? :-P > "Unconfigured Simplecast Domain You are seeing this page because your website is not configured properly."
    - goldenkey 5y ago
      It couldn't deal with HN traffic I guess. Here's a cache link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ImywwLhoQwgJ:https://whats-wrong-with-the-podcast.simplecast.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ImywwL...
  - robocat 5y ago
    > Make oxygen magnetic and then just pull it out of water Liquid oxygen is paramagnetic and it is attracted to a magnet. https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae493.cfm https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae493.cfm Disclaimer: Sorry if that was what you were alluding to... the person on the GP's audio clip was too annoying for me to waste time listening to it.
    - goldenkey 5y ago
sandworm101 5y ago
Would there even be any brine? If they take out the lithium but don't take any water out (remix everything other than lithium) then the net effect on salinity would be almost nothing. It would make economic sense to colocated, to also do freshwater extraction at the same facility, but the removal of the lithium would then be beside the point. I wonder if the process can work for other more valuable substances. Uranium from seawater has been done for a while now. This process might make it cheaper than mining. The world could change if every country with access to the sea can start extracting such things.
brightball 5y ago
Between this and the discovery of producing Graphene without mining, the future of battery tech should be really interesting. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-range-breakthrough-as-new-aluminum-ion-battery-charges-60-times-faster-than-lithium-ion/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-ran...

rmason 5y ago

In Michigan there is a special class of mining known as injection wells where they force water into wells and extract either salt or potassium fertilizer. Makes me wonder if they could extract lithium as a byproduct of this process?

orwin 5y ago
Its hard to say as the process is not described well. It seems to be, but i know that this kind of article is obscure on purpose to let readers imagine all kind of applications.
swader999 5y ago
This is being attempted with lithium as well: https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/meet-the-company-thats-looking-to-mine-lithium-from-albertas-old-oil-and-gas-wells https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/meet-the-compan...

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

This is amazing development taking in consideration how devastating classic lithium mining can be for surrounding nature. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environmen... At the same time by this method lithium it can become available almost for all countries on the planet (minus 45 that do not have sea).

clcaev 5y ago
If only the price if lithium mined in these ways included the a tax for these environmental externalities.
- FranchuFranchu 5y ago
  I don't think Argentina, Chile, or Bolivia's governments will increase taxes on the people their bribes come from.
jeffbee 5y ago
The actual footprint of lithium mining is absolutely tiny compared to pretty much any other metal in demand. Iron, copper, and aluminum mining have left giant gaping scars in the earth that are thousands of times larger than anything anyone has even proposed doing for lithium. And that's before we start to talk about surface coal mining, tar sands, and all the land that's been scraped flat for oil and gas exploration and production. Get some perspective on this by getting out of your house and looking around. Those photos in the article that are intended to shock me would amount to a single medium-scale table salt evaporation facility.
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
  That looks like a fallacy reasoning. In the same way if we would compare any harm that is happening on our planet to let say: Solar system, galaxy or universe, combined with age of a star, so it would be negligible and therefore justifiable? Collateral damage is justifiable unless you are not that damage isn't it? Better reasoning could begin with the question: would I leave my comfortable home, go there, and live there in community where water is contaminated by lithium mining sludge. Would I drink that water every day? Is there anyone who is suffering so I could enjoy comfortable life?

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I remember reading a story like this a few years ago. I think, in that case, it was about rare earth minerals. Don’t get me wrong; I really want this to work, but until the extraction plant gets built and is producing at scale, I won’t hold my breath.

Taniwha 5y ago

$5 a kilogram from seawater seems almost magical, I look forwards to the actual proof.

adrian_b 5y ago
$5 per kg for the electricity expenses is far from magical, but it should be low enough to make the extraction profitable. I do not know the current price of lithium, because most previous information sources, like the metal exchanges, no longer make their data public. Nevertheless, a few years ago lithium was around $66 per kg. So $5 would be just about 7.5% of the price per kg, but there are a lot of other costs, like replacing from time to time the expensive LLTO ceramic membrane and the very expensive Pt-Ru coated cathode and also many other operational costs and the amortization of the investment. For reversible batteries, the conversion of lithium phosphate to another lithium salt might be enough, but for applications that need metallic lithium, like primary batteries or Li-Al alloys, the lithium phosphate must be converted into lithium chloride or other suitable salt and the metallic lithium must be extracted by electrolysis, with additional, higher, costs for electric energy. However, the method described is sound and there are also useful byproducts to ensure or increase the profit. The method is not new, but the major achievement is finding a suitable material for the selective membrane, which passes lithium but blocks the much more abundant sodium & potassium. Unlike many such announcements, this appears to have good chances to eventually be used for lithium extraction.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  > the very expensive Pt-Ru coated cathode The Pt-Ru is just a catalyst, no? Maybe it gets contaminated but it would hopefully be recycled. Might even go up in value over time rather than be consumed.

baybal2 5y ago

Well, that $5 per kg is highly dependent on purity. If they get chemical grade lithium without extra steps, it might well be cheaper than "mining"

rasz 5y ago
Extracting from the sea might be more ecological than mining.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Tade0 5y ago

To put the amount of lithium in seawater in perspective: Just 2% of that would be enough to create storage capable of holding a year's worth of the world's electricity consumption.

mac01021 5y ago
2% of what? All the lithium in the world's oceans?
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  2 % of 0.2 ppm of the entire ocean is helluva lot of stuff. On the order of a cubic kilometer in volume.
jokoon 5y ago
I wonder, what's the cost of lithium in battery making? I've seen a video of how smartphone batteries are made, it's pretty advanced...
- Tade0 5y ago
  There's around 160-200g of lithium in 1 kWh of batteries, meanwhile lithium costs ~$13.50/kg, so in 1 kWh there's around $2.70 worth of lithium.
  - jokoon 5y ago
    My question was rather "does it really make batteries cheaper?".
    - Tagbert 5y ago
      Maybe somewhat but what it mostly does is allow for more batteries to be made without driving up the cost of materials.

orwin 5y ago

I really hope this is not something like the false joy i had when it was said we were able to remove ligogen from hardwood completely and that the carbon structure was almost as strong as steel. Three years later, i'm still waiting for it :/

crubier 5y ago
You must be young, or only started reading about science in mainstream media recently. The kind of false joy you are talking about has been my constant pain for like 25years. You just have to understand that « scientific paper hyped up in mainstream media » != « new technology entering the market ».
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  Every now and then it happens. e-ink being the example I remember as a kid. It happened!

tlb 5y ago

To extract 1 kg from 0.2 ppm seawater, you need to process 5e6 kg of water. $5 of electricity at $0.09/kWh is 200 MJ, which is enough to pump that much water 40 m high, or push it through a membrane with 4 bar pressure drop. So you can't do very much to seawater at that price point. Like many "scientists develop cheap ___" headlines, it may just cover part of the process and not the whole operation.

ArkanExplorer 5y ago
If you can piggyback on desalinization of water, some of this process becomes 'free'. I wonder if we are wasting valuable brine as part of our established desalinization processes?
- muyuu 5y ago
  whoa I was making the exact same point simultaneously in a sibling comment
- redsummer 5y ago
  Isn’t Lithium an anti-depressant? If it’s extracted from drinking water, won’t you end up with miserable people?
  - beowulfey 5y ago
    OP you replied to was saying the remnant waste brine from desalination may contain valuable lithium.
  - swader999 5y ago
    Just pirates and fisherman would be affected but they are salty to begin with.
    - failwhaleshark 5y ago
      No we're not, you bloody idiot! Returns to mending nets and counting seagulls.

dsomers 5y ago

But won’t this make the fish sad?!

sidm83 5y ago
This need more upvotes lol
- Sabinus 5y ago
  Please don't. I like that this place isn't reddit.
  - Yajirobe 5y ago
    But you people visit Reddit as well. Is this your alter ego on HN? Why not behave the same way you do in other communities, why put on a mask for the HN folks?
    - belter 5y ago
      I think its about keeping one place for meaningful discussion and other for meme creation.
    - wruza 5y ago
      you people visit Reddit as well That’s a generalization, not everyone visits reddit.
    - jamestnz 5y ago
      > Is this your alter ego on HN? Come now, let's not be obtuse. People naturally behave differently in different social contexts, a thing that is totally normal and expected. For instance, consider how you'd behave in a professional situation, vs when drinking with your friends, vs when catching up with your grandmother. Having different standards in different online communities seems no different.
      - Yajirobe 5y ago

AYBABTME 5y ago

Did I get this right: the primary process is basically an LTO battery where salt-water sits behind the LTO's membrane, and when the battery is "charged", the Lithium ions are "sucked" into the battery-side's electrolyte by osmosis? Not a chemist so I'm just trying to see if I grokked it. If I did, then this is remarkably simple!

kortex 5y ago
That's my read on it. It's kinda obvious when you frame it that way. Use a substrate which limits the ion size and apply an electric field.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Sounds similar to what EnergyX is doing: https://energyx.com/technology/#lithium-refinery https://energyx.com/technology/#lithium-refinery They built technology to separate lithium from brine that has high concentrations of it. Their short term plan is to test this in Bolivia where lithium is currently being mined by evaporating water in basins (using the sun). This takes huge amounts of water and a lot of time. This would potentially be a lot more efficient. The same company is also working on solid state batteries. Doing the same with sea water would just require pumping a lot of water, I imagine. If you are desalinating that, you'd end up with a brine with relatively high concentrations of salt, lithium, etc. Same for hydrogen production. So, not the worst idea to do something productive with that brine (as opposed to dumping it back in the sea).

Zenst 5y ago

"This means that the value of hydrogen and chlorine produced by the cell would end up offsetting the cost of power, and residual seawater could also be used in desalination plants to provide freshwater." Yes if you run electrodes in water you get Oxygen and Hydrogen at the respective electrodes. Add salt as you get in seawater and you get Hydrogen and Chlorine. Is the demand for Chlorine that high? [EDIT ADD] YES, it is and thank you for the replies, the epoxy one I had no idea (never even thought about it even).

_Microft 5y ago
The global demand for chlorine is 25-30 times as high as the amount of chlorine they would expect to produce when replacing all current lithium production with their process.
imtringued 5y ago
You need chlorine to produce epoxy so yes it's pretty high.
flying_kiwi 5y ago
Yes. Chlorine is used in many industrial processes and as a base material for a lot of things, including PVC plastic.

andrewfromx 5y ago

makes me think of https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/project-natick-underwater-datacenter/ https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/project-natick... and using the "wasted" heat those servers generate to do something with seawater like extract lithium or just salt and make fresh drinking water?

antattack 5y ago

It appears that this method is more profitable than mining Bitcoin if electricity cost is >.03/kWh and Lithium $10/kg.

gameswithgo 5y ago
Too bad you get any GPUs, guess electric car will have to wait.

belter 5y ago

I am not sure, but sadly, it seems the reduction in carbon footprint from EVs is nullified by the expanded carbon emissions from lithium mining: http://blog.gorozen.com/blog/exploring-lithium-ion-electric-vehicles-carbon-footprint http://blog.gorozen.com/blog/exploring-lithium-ion-electric-...

belter 5y ago
It seems many of you do not agree, so please give me the benefit of the doubt and review some data points: "Effects of battery manufacturing on electric vehicle life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions" https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life-cycle-GHG_ICCT-Briefing_09022018_vF.pdf https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/EV-life... "Analysis of the climate impact of lithium-ion batteries and how to measure it" https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publications/2019_11_Analysis_CO2_footprint_lithium-ion_batteries.pdf https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat... "Climate explained: the environmental footprint of electric versus fossil cars" https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmental-footprint-of-electric-versus-fossil-cars-124762 https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmen...
- philipkglass 5y ago
  Two of these citations undermine your original claim that "the reduction in carbon footprint from EVs is nullified by the expanded carbon emissions from lithium mining." https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmental-footprint-of-electric-versus-fossil-cars-124762 https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmen... says So on the basis of recent studies, fossil-fueled cars generally emit more than electric cars in all phases of a life cycle. and https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publications/2019_11_Analysis_CO2_footprint_lithium-ion_batteries.pdf https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat... says Overall, electric vehicles typically have much lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions than a typical car in Europe, even when assuming relatively high battery manufacturing emissions. The first link does not appear to directly compare internal combustion vehicles against battery electric vehicles.

odyssey7 5y ago

Does somebody know the environmental impact of this? Would the lithium concentration in seawater become meaningfully lower, and if so have we verified that organisms aren’t dependent on it?

mot0rola 5y ago
Had the same thought, are there repercussions?
amelius 5y ago
The solution is simple: just dump used batteries back into the ocean :) Just kidding, of course.
- Forbo 5y ago
  Oddly enough, there's a meme about this (although it's lead-acid rather than lithium)... https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/throwing-car-batteries-into-the-ocean https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/throwing-car-batteries-into-t...
jpalomaki 5y ago
Two snippets from the Google search for scale: "The world's oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of lithium" "Lithium mines produced an estimated global total of 82,000 metric tons of lithium in 2020"
- amelius 5y ago
  So even after 100 years of extraction, the effect would still be less than 0.005%.
  - lolsal 5y ago
    We don't have a good idea of how this new method will scale, or how demand will scale once this cheaper method gets going. It's hard to speculate accurately I think.
5y ago

mongol 5y ago

Could this be done far away at sea, perhaps close to oil and gas platforms?

mattmaroon 5y ago

I can already see the 2050 headlines: fish populations rapidly depleting from lithium deprivation.

xbar 5y ago
Nice! You predict fish remain in 2050!

hypnoscripto 5y ago

How does this compare to current prices?

twobitshifter 5y ago

A really cool example of lithium from seawater is underway on the Salton Sea using geothermal plants. The water in the Salton Sea is incredible high in lithium and there’s enough there to supply the demand for US EVs. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/28/990867075/californias-white-gold-rush-lithium-in-demand-amid-surge-in-electric-vehicles https://www.npr.org/2021/04/28/990867075/californias-white-g... I believe there’s a few startups rushing to get there first.

kilroy123 5y ago
I think this is a far better idea. This is the first time I'm hearing about this.
hypnoscripto 5y ago
Salton Sea is one of the most disgusting and hazardous places in the USA. I’m glad something good can come of it. Hopefully profits will be used for remediation and cleanup.

venkaesh 5y ago

Head start

williesleg 5y ago

Another way to kill the oceans. So pissed china pumps tons of crap there, and their massive ships with all that fossil fuels putting their emissions into the oceans, killing the reefs. Now we steal the oceans lithium. Wtf you people, all loving to kill the oceans. Stop it now.

plankers 5y ago

Soon: a global reduction of lithium levels in seawater makes fish more aggressive.

cronix 5y ago

I just wonder if any creature depends on the lithium levels being what they currently are to survive. It seems we're great at discovering X but at the expense of the unknown Y and by the time we discover the problem in Y, it's too late to fix it. And now we have also have a problem with Z caused by Y.

whiddershins 5y ago
In other comment above, quick math shows the scale of this concern ends up being completely off. The oceans are just so much bigger than we can easily conceptualize. So very much bigger.
- cronix 5y ago
  > The oceans are just so much bigger than we can easily conceptualize. So very much bigger. Yes, so big in fact that at one time we didn't think that little 'ol mankind could alter it, just like the rest of the planet. What does raising the ocean temp by a measly 1-2 degrees do to thousands of different plants and animals in the sea? Did we know that 100 years ago? These very large complex systems aren't as immune to small changes as we once thought and often cascade into other systems.
  - whiddershins 5y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27412684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27412684

hourislate 5y ago

The Japanese seem to have a head start on this process. Article from 2016. https://www.miningweekly.com/article/over-40-minerals-and-metals-contained-in-seawater-their-extraction-likely-to-increase-in-the-future-2016-04-01/rep_id:3650 https://www.miningweekly.com/article/over-40-minerals-and-me... Last year, researchers at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s Rokkasho Fusion Institute revealed that they had developed a new way of extracting lithium from seawater. This involves dialysis. It employs a dialysis cell containing a membrane made from a superconducting material. Lithium is the only ion in the seawater that can pass through the membrane. It moves from the negative electrode side of the cell to the positive electrode side. They reported that the system displayed good energy efficiency and that it would be easy to scale it up. However, they also cautioned that the process is years away from being commercialized.

dtgriscom 5y ago
We're nowhere near materials that superconduct above water's freezing point (even salt water); how could this work?
- hourislate 5y ago
  There are many criteria by which superconductors are classified. Superconductor material classes include chemical elements (e.g. mercury or lead), alloys (such as niobium–titanium, germanium–niobium, and niobium nitride), ceramics (YBCO and magnesium diboride), superconducting pnictides (like fluorine-doped LaOFeAs) or organic superconductors (fullerenes and carbon nanotubes; though perhaps these examples should be included among the chemical elements, as they are composed entirely of carbon).[12][13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity
- _Microft 5y ago
  The answer seems to be that it is a misnomer or at least bad choice of name. They talk about (lithium) ionic superconductors at each occurence of the term superconductor which makes me think that they actually mean materials that only let lithium ions through but not others (because this is how their device actually works). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011916414006560 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001191641... (Open Access)

yuvalr1 5y ago

What would the sea corals say about us taking their lithium away? Do they even like lithium? Maybe we're doing them a favor.

nimbius 5y ago

From the perspective of a diesel engine tech, this is a controversial opinion, but I'm absolutely glad to see this breakthrough. Lithium is a conflict resource. its scarce, its hard to mine, and as a result so far electric cars are a fanciful plaything for what i would consider "the rich." This paves the way for electric cars that a working class mom and dad can afford to get to and from work and the store. and of course electric trucks that have obscene amounts of torque means never "getting stuck" behind a slow truck ever again. it also means cleaner cities and hopefully cheaper trucking for over the road drivers and owner/operators. Ive told my coworkers and apprentices this for as long as i can remember: expect to service elecric long-haul trucks in your lifetime. Learn the powertrain, the dynamics, the performance characteristics and keep pace with the technology as it evolves. Make it part of your expectation in the future, because the economic model of diesel is a last-ditch effort at best in the 21st century.

coding123 5y ago
Just throwing this out there, but a lot of working class contractor type drive a RAM/Ford/Chevy 1 ton class diesel trucks with mega cab that typically runs in the neighborhood of 50-70k, so these people WILL transition to electric. I already know republican types in rural areas that even want to get the Cybertruck (even if it means looking like one of those rich types).
- jwolfe 5y ago
  > I already know republican types in rural areas that even want to get the Cybertruck (even if it means looking like one of those rich types). Not entirely on topic, but I'm curious whether their interest will shift to the electric Ford truck.
  - pmorici 5y ago
    Anecdotally, I know someone who saw the Electric Hummer commercial during the Super Bowl earlier this year and it led him down a path that ended in him buying a Model Y a few weeks ago. Other players announcing vehicles that are years away from production is a net positive for Tesla sales. It's counter intuitive so not many people under stand that but it is definitely a thing from what I've observed. The mechanism is that you have these companies talking about electric vehicles which brings more attention to the coming change in technology and Tesla has a wider selection of best in class for the price electric vehicles than anyone else that you can buy right now and not wait.

amai 5y ago

See also New patented process to enable lithium extraction from geothermal in Germany: https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/new-patented-process-to-enable-lithium-extraction-from-geothermal-in-germany/ https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/new-patented-process-to-enabl...

ck2 5y ago

relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/678/ https://xkcd.com/678/

Animats 5y ago

They're still at the bench-top stage with this, from the pictures. This is something that ought to work, since lithium is commercially extracted from denser brines.[1] Extraction from seawater is quite possible but not yet cost-effective. So cost is the big question. This is the usual problem when articles announcing "cheap and easy" come from the surface-chemistry crowd. The authors write "a preliminary economic analysis shows that the process can be made profitable when coupled with the chlor-alkali industry." So they apparently want to run this off of the reject stream from a plant that extracts chlorine and sodium hydroxide from brine. Running this downstream of a chlor-alkali plant means somebody else already has a brine source and a way to get rid of all the rejected brine. This sort of thing is common. A lot of rare mineral extraction is done as part of a process that extracts a less-rare mineral. Profitability is going to turn on all the usual problems with membrane systems - how long does the membrane last, how often does it have to be backwashed, what parts in the system corrode, and similar routine engineering problems. That's usually the hard part. [1] https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/ https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-...

billiam 5y ago

It's a big deal, if just to provide a signal that lithium supply can be distributed in the future and mineralized, concentrated, and potentially politicized sources won't dominate. The biggest effect might be to chill R&D on alternative chemistries to lithium for motorized transport batteries as well as lithium recycling research.