5 ms·

They discuss this on pages 3 to 5 of the paper if you want to read up on this. Here is an excerpt: "Based on these data, we estimated the total electricity req

They discuss this on pages 3 to 5 of the paper if you want to read up on this. Here is an excerpt: "Based on these data, we estimated the total electricity required to enrich 1 kg lithium from seawater to 9000 ppm in five stages to be 76.34 kWh. Simultaneously, 0.87 kg H_2 and 31.12 kg Cl_2 were collected from the cathode and the anode, respectively. Taking the US electricity price of US$ 0.065 per kWh into consideration, the total electricity cost for this process is approximately US$ 5.0. In addition, based on the 2020 prices of hydrogen and Cl_2 (i.e., US$ 2.5–8.0 per kg and US$ 0.15 per kg, respectively), the side-product value is approximately US$ 6.9–11.7, which can well compensate for the total energy cost. It should also be noted that the current Cl_2 utilisation capacity in the chlor-alkali industry is ~ 80 Mtons/year. Even in the case where all the world lithium capacity is produced from our extraction process, the amount of Cl_2 produced will be 3 Mtons, and so will have very little effect on the total market", from https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ee/d1ee00354b https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ee/d1ee00354...

LB232323 5y ago
So it's both efficient and the electricity cost is covered by the profitablity of the side products. Pretty amazing innovation, certainly a more sustainable solution than overthrowing the Bolivian government and murdering Native protestors. To think that an entire mineral mining industry could be replaced by processing seawater is revolutionary.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  Do you remember this guy, Kanzius, who showed that you can burn saltwater when pumping it with radio waves? Yet, the citation trail seems dead because scientists assumed that he was a crank claiming he got more power out than he put in. No, he just demonstrated a really neat approach to electrodeless hydrolysis. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a2840/4271398/#:~:text=Kanzius'%20concept%20is%20simple%3A%20expose,for%20a%20cure%20for%20cancer https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a2840/4271398/#:~:t....
  - qayxc 5y ago
    If by "neat" you mean "inefficient", then yes.
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      By neat I mean "holy shit, the salt water is literally on fire"
  - _Microft 5y ago
    The article contains a broken link to the paper but I think I found it on Sci Hub. It's short by the way, just three or four pages of own content: https://sci-hub.do/10.1179/143307508/270875 https://sci-hub.do/10.1179/143307508/270875 Edit: it's a bit of a strange paper with a lot of talk about unrelated things (imo) but there seems to be this unexpected effect which might make it worthwhile to investigate it independently from what one thinks of this paper. The setup seems to be simple and cheap enough that there should not be huge obstacles to get easy and fast results.
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      Thanks for the edit. I view this all through the lens of the politics of science. Some radio technician figures out a really unexpected natural effect, it gets major news coverage by a scientifically illiterate press (claiming free energy), and the scientific mainstream pounce: "how foolish they were to think that energy could be extracted from water!" And yet (and this is the thing that makes me jump up and down), we still have a really unexpected property of nature! Study that shit, people! I might be wrong, but it seems that the reason the topic isn't studied—even to measure the inefficiency—is due to some unhealthy politics in modern science. I expect it will first be studied by YouTubers like "the plasma channel".
      - gus_massa 5y ago
        > Study that shit, people! From a practical point of view, It looks like an interesting demo, but I don't think it has too many applications. I only can imagine that it may be useful as a sterilization process, whatever virus or bacteria that is in the solution will be extremely unhappy with so much H2 and O2 around. The flame and the small risk of an explosion is a problem. From a theoretical point of view, it's easy to model isolated small molecules. Big molecules or combination of molecules is exponentially more difficult, like in ~exp(5*N) where N is the number of atoms and 5 is an oversimplification. There are some approximations that reduce it to a polynomial time like ~(5N)^12 or ~(5N)^9 less if you use more approximations. And with more approximations you can calculate it in linear time that is very useful for biochemistry that are interested in big molecules. Anyway, most of these methods assume that atoms don't move, or don't move too much, or use a lot of simplifications. Simulation water at the molecular level is a nightmare. You need to simulate many molecules, each one moving around, that form bounds between them that are not stable enough to simulate like a fixed length, but stable enough to be ignored. And now you need to add a strong electromagnetic field to the mix, and the nightmare is upgraded to the Freddy Krueger level.

LB232323 5y ago

So it's both efficient and the electricity cost is covered by the profitablity of the side products. Pretty amazing innovation, certainly a more sustainable solution than overthrowing the Bolivian government and murdering Native protestors. To think that an entire mineral mining industry could be replaced by processing seawater is revolutionary.

dr_dshiv 5y ago
Do you remember this guy, Kanzius, who showed that you can burn saltwater when pumping it with radio waves? Yet, the citation trail seems dead because scientists assumed that he was a crank claiming he got more power out than he put in. No, he just demonstrated a really neat approach to electrodeless hydrolysis. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a2840/4271398/#:~:text=Kanzius'%20concept%20is%20simple%3A%20expose,for%20a%20cure%20for%20cancer https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a2840/4271398/#:~:t....
- qayxc 5y ago
  If by "neat" you mean "inefficient", then yes.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    By neat I mean "holy shit, the salt water is literally on fire"
- _Microft 5y ago
  The article contains a broken link to the paper but I think I found it on Sci Hub. It's short by the way, just three or four pages of own content: https://sci-hub.do/10.1179/143307508/270875 https://sci-hub.do/10.1179/143307508/270875 Edit: it's a bit of a strange paper with a lot of talk about unrelated things (imo) but there seems to be this unexpected effect which might make it worthwhile to investigate it independently from what one thinks of this paper. The setup seems to be simple and cheap enough that there should not be huge obstacles to get easy and fast results.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    Thanks for the edit. I view this all through the lens of the politics of science. Some radio technician figures out a really unexpected natural effect, it gets major news coverage by a scientifically illiterate press (claiming free energy), and the scientific mainstream pounce: "how foolish they were to think that energy could be extracted from water!" And yet (and this is the thing that makes me jump up and down), we still have a really unexpected property of nature! Study that shit, people! I might be wrong, but it seems that the reason the topic isn't studied—even to measure the inefficiency—is due to some unhealthy politics in modern science. I expect it will first be studied by YouTubers like "the plasma channel".
    - gus_massa 5y ago
      > Study that shit, people! From a practical point of view, It looks like an interesting demo, but I don't think it has too many applications. I only can imagine that it may be useful as a sterilization process, whatever virus or bacteria that is in the solution will be extremely unhappy with so much H2 and O2 around. The flame and the small risk of an explosion is a problem. From a theoretical point of view, it's easy to model isolated small molecules. Big molecules or combination of molecules is exponentially more difficult, like in ~exp(5*N) where N is the number of atoms and 5 is an oversimplification. There are some approximations that reduce it to a polynomial time like ~(5N)^12 or ~(5N)^9 less if you use more approximations. And with more approximations you can calculate it in linear time that is very useful for biochemistry that are interested in big molecules. Anyway, most of these methods assume that atoms don't move, or don't move too much, or use a lot of simplifications. Simulation water at the molecular level is a nightmare. You need to simulate many molecules, each one moving around, that form bounds between them that are not stable enough to simulate like a fixed length, but stable enough to be ignored. And now you need to add a strong electromagnetic field to the mix, and the nightmare is upgraded to the Freddy Krueger level.