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Does somebody know the environmental impact of this? Would the lithium concentration in seawater become meaningfully lower, and if so have we verified that orga

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.
NilsIRL 5y ago
Keep in mind that that is not the only possible environmental impact. In order to extract such large volumes of water, ecosystems may be damaged.
- athrowaway3z 5y ago
  No. Damage from extracting 'large volumes' is insignificant. (waste is another issue) You are completely off scale. The oceans contain 1.34e+21 L. Humanity uses 1.38e+17J annually. If we take ~10J to move 1Kg 1m up. That means if we spend all our energy on moving sea water, we can move 0.00001% of the ocean up by 1 meter per year. Any novel ecosystem is close to shore, from those ecosystems most are already damaged by other means.
  - NilsIRL 5y ago
    Animals clogging up nuclear power plants is a common occurance[1][2][3]. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-21/french-nuclear-plant-halted-after-fish-clog-water-filters https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-21/french-nu... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/01/jellyfish-clog-swedish-nuclear-reactor-shutdown https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/01/jellyfish-clog... [3]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hinkley-point-c-power-station-fish-suck-b1818580.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hinkley-poin...
ranguna 5y ago
Only one way to find out! Jokes aside, this would be awesome for Portugal, there's a lot of protests when lithium mines open in here. Have an option to start extracting lithium from the ocean (which Portugal has LOTS of) would be really cool, but I doubt anyone would put a finger on it without have proper studies on the environmental impact.

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.

NilsIRL 5y ago

Keep in mind that that is not the only possible environmental impact. In order to extract such large volumes of water, ecosystems may be damaged.

athrowaway3z 5y ago
No. Damage from extracting 'large volumes' is insignificant. (waste is another issue) You are completely off scale. The oceans contain 1.34e+21 L. Humanity uses 1.38e+17J annually. If we take ~10J to move 1Kg 1m up. That means if we spend all our energy on moving sea water, we can move 0.00001% of the ocean up by 1 meter per year. Any novel ecosystem is close to shore, from those ecosystems most are already damaged by other means.
- NilsIRL 5y ago
  Animals clogging up nuclear power plants is a common occurance[1][2][3]. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-21/french-nuclear-plant-halted-after-fish-clog-water-filters https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-21/french-nu... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/01/jellyfish-clog-swedish-nuclear-reactor-shutdown https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/01/jellyfish-clog... [3]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hinkley-point-c-power-station-fish-suck-b1818580.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hinkley-poin...

ranguna 5y ago

Only one way to find out! Jokes aside, this would be awesome for Portugal, there's a lot of protests when lithium mines open in here. Have an option to start extracting lithium from the ocean (which Portugal has LOTS of) would be really cool, but I doubt anyone would put a finger on it without have proper studies on the environmental impact.