4 ms·

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 desa

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.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  No, lithium is a mood stabilizer. It is mainly used to treat manic episodes in bipolar disorders and is not a particularly effective treatment for major depression. I doubt drinking water contains anything close to therapeutic doses of lithium.
ncmncm 5y ago
They include selling the H and Cl gases also produced to bring the net cost down to $5.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  It’d be cool if they could combine this with extraction of Uranium 235 for a more sustainable source of nuclear fuel. EDIT: For more context, nuclear power could be a great tool in reducing carbon emissions. I read somewhere that mining Uranium 235 from seawater at scale would cost roughy 2x to 3x what it costs to get the fuel from the ground at today's prices. I was trying to say that if we're going through all of the trouble to extract Lithium from seawater, it'd be cool if extracting Uranium at the same time made both processes more economical.
  - failwhaleshark 5y ago
    ?
    - _Microft 5y ago
      Seawater contains uranium among other things: "Seawater contains about 3.3 parts per billion of uranium by weight, approximately (3.3 µg/kg) or, 3.3 micrograms per liter of seawater.[6] The extraction of uranium from seawater has been considered as a means of obtaining the element.", from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_in_the_environment#Natural_occurrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_in_the_environment#Nat... (Mining uranium is as environmentally unfriendly as other mining operations, just do a web search for "uranium mining".)
      - gus_massa 5y ago
        The trick here is to use a ceramic filter that have holes that are so small that only Lithium can pass through. Actually the only "molecules" smaller than Lithium are Hydrogen and Helium. Helium is not a problem because it's too easy to pull apart and Hydrogen (H+ and H2) are not problem because H2 is another of the products. (Actually^2 H+ is not isolated, it's combined with water in H3O+, but I guess the holes need some room for the water around the Li+ ions. The technical details are probably more complicated, but "small holes only allow H, He and Li to pass" is a good approximation.) But Uranium atoms are huge. They are bigger than most atoms, and I'm not sure if the common form in seawater is a combination of Uranium and Oxygen. A hole that big will allow most mineral to pass, so you will just get brine. Using it in the other direction with holes just smaller than Uranium is also not very useful, because you will get Uranium mixed with a lot of crap, many of the contamination are not isolated atoms (that are mostly smaller) but molecules that combine a few atoms are are bigger.
andi999 5y ago
Interesting point. Lets do the numbers. Supposedly desalination is 86.55 million m3/day (https://iwa-network.org/desalination-past-present-future/ https://iwa-network.org/desalination-past-present-future/). 1m^3 is 10^3 kg. So 8610^9 kg desalinated water, I dont know the conversion rate, but lets say rougly 110^11kg water from sea pumped. Divided by 5e6 we have 2*10^4 kg/ day. 20 tons of lithum per day. Sounds a lot. That's roughly 8000 tons of lithium per year. Worldproduction is 80000 tons per year. https://www.statista.com/statistics/606684/world-production-of-lithium/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/606684/world-production-... So while not insignificant it doesnt seem a game-changer. (I might have miscalculated a factor of 10 somewhere, probably..)

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.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
No, lithium is a mood stabilizer. It is mainly used to treat manic episodes in bipolar disorders and is not a particularly effective treatment for major depression. I doubt drinking water contains anything close to therapeutic doses of lithium.

ncmncm 5y ago

They include selling the H and Cl gases also produced to bring the net cost down to $5.

devoutsalsa 5y ago
It’d be cool if they could combine this with extraction of Uranium 235 for a more sustainable source of nuclear fuel. EDIT: For more context, nuclear power could be a great tool in reducing carbon emissions. I read somewhere that mining Uranium 235 from seawater at scale would cost roughy 2x to 3x what it costs to get the fuel from the ground at today's prices. I was trying to say that if we're going through all of the trouble to extract Lithium from seawater, it'd be cool if extracting Uranium at the same time made both processes more economical.
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  ?
  - _Microft 5y ago
    Seawater contains uranium among other things: "Seawater contains about 3.3 parts per billion of uranium by weight, approximately (3.3 µg/kg) or, 3.3 micrograms per liter of seawater.[6] The extraction of uranium from seawater has been considered as a means of obtaining the element.", from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_in_the_environment#Natural_occurrence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_in_the_environment#Nat... (Mining uranium is as environmentally unfriendly as other mining operations, just do a web search for "uranium mining".)
    - gus_massa 5y ago
      The trick here is to use a ceramic filter that have holes that are so small that only Lithium can pass through. Actually the only "molecules" smaller than Lithium are Hydrogen and Helium. Helium is not a problem because it's too easy to pull apart and Hydrogen (H+ and H2) are not problem because H2 is another of the products. (Actually^2 H+ is not isolated, it's combined with water in H3O+, but I guess the holes need some room for the water around the Li+ ions. The technical details are probably more complicated, but "small holes only allow H, He and Li to pass" is a good approximation.) But Uranium atoms are huge. They are bigger than most atoms, and I'm not sure if the common form in seawater is a combination of Uranium and Oxygen. A hole that big will allow most mineral to pass, so you will just get brine. Using it in the other direction with holes just smaller than Uranium is also not very useful, because you will get Uranium mixed with a lot of crap, many of the contamination are not isolated atoms (that are mostly smaller) but molecules that combine a few atoms are are bigger.

andi999 5y ago

Interesting point. Lets do the numbers. Supposedly desalination is 86.55 million m3/day (https://iwa-network.org/desalination-past-present-future/ https://iwa-network.org/desalination-past-present-future/). 1m^3 is 10^3 kg. So 8610^9 kg desalinated water, I dont know the conversion rate, but lets say rougly 110^11kg water from sea pumped. Divided by 5e6 we have 2*10^4 kg/ day. 20 tons of lithum per day. Sounds a lot. That's roughly 8000 tons of lithium per year. Worldproduction is 80000 tons per year. https://www.statista.com/statistics/606684/world-production-of-lithium/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/606684/world-production-... So while not insignificant it doesnt seem a game-changer. (I might have miscalculated a factor of 10 somewhere, probably..)