12 ms·

Tesla’s new patent involves using table salt to mine lithium

140 points by mardiyah 5y ago

gnfargbl 5y ago
The actual patent is at https://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=5001&p=101&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20210708.PD.&OS=PD/20210708&RS=PD/20210708 https://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=....
askl 5y ago
Take this report with a grain of salt.
- CyanBird 5y ago
  HN does not welcome low value comments
  - HellDunkel 5y ago
    „humor is devisive“ said some engineer mocking google recently.
  - nottorp 5y ago
    HN is afraid of attempts at humour, you mean.
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
      It's okay to be funny here. It just has to do something for the audience and not waste their time.
  - rPlayer6554 5y ago
    You seem a bit....salty.
- rpmisms 5y ago
  This is a valuable comment that is also a pun. Tesla having a patent on a process does not mean that it's necessarily what they're going to do, simply an option they're exploring. Hence, take this article with a grain of salt.
stupidcar 5y ago
This article they quote from seems like a better source for details : https://electrek.co/2021/07/09/tesla-patent-reveals-elon-musk-table-salt-lithium-extraction-process/ https://electrek.co/2021/07/09/tesla-patent-reveals-elon-mus...
- SEJeff 5y ago
  Electrek is a glorified Tesla fanboi (Fredrick Lambert) blog which often skews reality. I'd never put "better source" and Electrek in the same sentence. I'm saying this as a Tesla owner mind you!
  - nickik 5y ago
    Lambert is often very competitive with Tesla and Elon doesn't like him for that reason. He is often very critical of Tesla. He never responds Electrek like he does some other blogs of that type. He far better sources on Tesla then most people. Certainty most other websites that run with this news. He has broken news on Tesla multiple times. Electrek has strongly moved in the direction of covering all EV launches and reporting on all of that while giving good press to all the other automakers. Accusing them of being just a Tesla fanblog is simply wrong. Maybe 5 years ago when Tesla was the only game in town this was more correct, but its not today.
  - relativ575 5y ago
    He is clearly a Tesla fan, and usually covers Tesla in favor light. He is far from the fanboy however, and even addressed fanboyism issue specifically: https://electrek.co/2021/04/05/tesla-toxic-superfans-giving-community-a-bad-name-stories-go-mainstream/ https://electrek.co/2021/04/05/tesla-toxic-superfans-giving-... Tesla still gets majority of coverage, understandably given that they were pretty much the only game in town until a few years ago (Nissan Leaf notwithstanding), but EV vehicles and motorbikes in general are very well presented.
    - SEJeff 5y ago
      If you’ve read Electrek for awhile, you’ll note that he sensationalizes virtually everything. He also over simplifies or just blatantly takes things out of context. He does this while trying to make Electrek appear as an actual news website when it is literally just a fanboi blog. He misrepresents the news. This is why much of what he has to say should be taken with a grain of salt.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
More like a lithium extraction patent. Table salt is involved in the extraction process. This has nothing to do with what the title made me envision: Tesla is diversifying into the food business or something?
- sharken 5y ago
  Yes, the title reads more like click bait, perhaps because the title "SELECTIVE EXTRACTION OF LITHIUM FROM CLAY MINERALS" from the patent application would not generate enough clicks. Apart from the semi-novel concept here, the word "about" is used frequently in the patent. It seems very hard to make something useful with the patent, with the uncertainty this introduces. Is that standard procedure ?
- tempodox 5y ago
  Yep, my first thought was, I'll have to pay license fees now for putting salt on my meal.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    But only for table salt. This could be a huge boon for kosher salt and sea salt.
    - rob74 5y ago
      Table salt, kosher salt, sea salt... it's all NaCl to me!
      - DoreenMichele 5y ago
        Someone needs to read labels and find out what they are actually putting in their mouths. ;) (Kosher salt is probably the only one on that list that is just NaCl. Table salt has an anticaking ingredient added, thus the catch phrase "when it rains, it pours" (because untreated salt clumps), and usually also has iodine added. Sea salt typically has a mix of other minerals found naturally in sea water and may be as little as 86 percent NaCl. There is also canning and pickling salt which is also possibly just NaCl. Pink Himalayan mountain salt contains iron, iirc, thus the pink coloring.) Edited to add winky and parantheses to try to signal "That first line was intended as lighthearded humor". I mostly suck at being funny. Droning on about things I know too much about is more my speed.
patrickk 5y ago
Whenever I hear "salt" and "battery" in the same sentence, I think of Sodium Ion batteries. Similar to lithium (neighbours on the periodic table), even cheaper and more abundant, and because sodium is heavier it should be strongly considered for stationary storage. I guess I'd need to consult that skeptical HN list on new battery tech to understand why it's not widely deployed yet!
- maxerickson 5y ago
  The huge investment in lithium-ion has stayed ahead of any materials cost advantage (so lithium-ion has been cheaper for all applications, in addition to being better for applications where density and weight matter).
  - patrickk 5y ago
    Indeed, good point. A shame really, as sodium could ease supply constraints and take up some of the burden instead of just lithium.
- Symmetry 5y ago
  Nifty. At first I thought you were talking about molten sodium batteries, which have been around for a while but inconveniently have to be kept at high temperatures to keep the sodium liquid and so haven't seen much adoption. But yeah, sodium ion batteries are now a thing and don't have that limitation.
sschueller 5y ago
"Tesla has filed a patent detailing a new way to mine for the lithium necessary for batteries. The concept isn’t new; " So which is it?
- mtgx 5y ago
  Tesla pretends the concept is new to get the patent. The concept isn't actually new. Would be far from the first time patents were granted this way...
- kenjackson 5y ago
  The article seems to imply that it was disclosed last year. Not the details of it, but the high level idea. Hi think the author should have said instead “but we first heard about the concept last year from Tesla”
  - SEJeff 5y ago
    Elon mentioned it at their “battery day” event and everyone sort of laughed about it.
- xvector 5y ago
  The rest of the sentence clarifies. Usually it's a good idea to read past the semicolon: "The concept isn’t new; Tesla CEO Elon Musk first mentioned it at last year’s battery day."
NullPrefix 5y ago
>According to Electrek, which has gotten hold of Tesla’s new patent Aren't patents supposed to be public?
- cjblomqvist 5y ago
  Not necessarily before they're accepted I guess?
- rwbhn 5y ago
  It is. https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2021138345&_cid=P11-KR66GK-50560-1 https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO20...
- fouc 5y ago
  "gotten hold of" aka "looked it up"
  - justaguy88 5y ago
    To be fair, even doing that is a lot compared to some news sources
    - brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
      True, but really, it's not that much work. News media needs to get back to true journalism. (Sorry to soapbox, I just hate the state of "news" these days)
- xkjkls 5y ago
  They are. Electrek just likes overstating their own importance.
- totalZero 5y ago
  They aren't typically published by the USPTO until 18 months after the priority date. https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s1120.html https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s1120.html
soco 5y ago
I have so much trust in the patent system that first I thought they were granted a patent on table salt.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Those were my first thoughts as well!
- sgdesign 5y ago
  Me too! I actually thought maybe they did that as a way to prove the absurdity of the patent system.
- davrosthedalek 5y ago
  I expected that Tesla got a patent on table salt and that some crazy Tesla fan (not every Tesla fan is crazy, but some are, as it happens with fans almost universally) is actually trying to sell it as a good thing.
  - simonh 5y ago
    It's fantastic because the revenue Tesla gets from everyone licensing table salt will be used to massively expand electric car production and shift us away from fossil fuels.
    - davrosthedalek 5y ago
      I saw a salt package recently which was labeled "Urmeersalz" = "primeval see salt". It was a bag of rock salt.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        It’s like sodium and chlorine atoms could have a pedigree… :-D
      - gerikson 5y ago
        Technically correct as rock salt was formed by the evaporation of ancient seas.
deregulateMed 5y ago
"but Tesla gave away their patents to help humanity." I remember that marketing trick. "Change the world" I remember that one too. Now I'm a skeptic. I just can't get excited about Tesla claims anymore. My brain has developed defensive mechanisms against their propaganda/PR machine.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  >their propaganda/PR machine You mean Elon's tweets? Because Tesla has, by far, the tiniest "propaganda/PR machine" in their industry. Do you have any idea how much their competitors spend on PR, advertising and lobbying? Also, how much their suppliers and partners (e.g oil and gas) bring to the table?
  - eloff 5y ago
    The money they don't spend on advertising is a huge part of their competitive advantage.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > "but Tesla gave away their patents to help humanity." (...) "Change the world" (...) They did, tho. They've pretty much forced the worldwide electrification of cars to happen, in spite of the market wanted. That's a huge help for humanity and a big change to the world. It's funny you should become skeptical over the rare case where pretentious slogans were actually true.
  - foepys 5y ago
    > They did, tho. They did give away their patents under the condition that everybody using them cannot sue Tesla. It's a bad deal for every other automaker because they either have far larger and far more specific patent pools or if they don't have patents, Tesla can steal every idea they will ever have. The whole thing was marketing bs from the very start. Tesla knew that nobody would take them up on the offer and in fact, literally nobody did.
aranw 5y ago
Is it just me or is everything that Tesla, SpaceX, <name of musk business>... is doing something that is "game changing" feel like everyone massively over hypes what there doing
- wongarsu 5y ago
  Tesla did change the game in automotive, creating a viable market for pure electric cars. SpaceX did change the game for space launch providers, proving that it's a viable and profitable business for startups with reasonable funding. Today we have lots of startups in the market competing for different niches, before SpaceX there were only slow moving giants like Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Of course the press likes to pump up the hype and will subsequently call everything they do game-changing. But it could be justified in this case. This could be game changing for lithium mining. And that's a game we are all somewhat invested in because of how prevalent lithium batteries have become in the last two decades.
  - leereeves 5y ago
    > before SpaceX there were only slow moving giants like Boeing and Northrop Grumman. SpaceX gets all the media attention, but Blue Origin was actually founded before SpaceX.
    - wongarsu 5y ago
      Blue Origin gets little media attention because their list of accomplishments is rather short. The seem to make good engines, but in the time SpaceX has developed the Falcon 1, the Falcon 9 (and launched it 120 times), the Falcon 9 heavy, and a human rated capsule that has made multiple crew launches to the ISS, Blue Origin has managed to develop one demonstrator that reached about 90 meters, and the suborbital New Shepard that is now finally about to have its first commercial launch. They certainly weren't involved in any game changing activities yet. They might play a significant role in bringing about space tourism, but that's yet to be seen.
      - 5y ago
grumpy-de-sre 5y ago
Quite a lot of dismissive comments here but the patent actually sounds very promising. I'm not familiar with the state of the art in the space but according to the patent the conventional approach involves acid leaching lithium rich clay. Tesla's approach involves exchanging lithium cations from the clay using a sodium chloride brine solution, mechanical agitation, and heat. The end result is a lithium rich brine that can be processed using conventional approaches and doesn't involve consuming large amounts of acid. Brine is also a lot easier to manage from an environmental perspective than strong mineral acids.
- orwin 5y ago
  and might use a lot less CO2.
- RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
  Perhaps couple with de-salination?
- rpmisms 5y ago
  Brine, if it's actually brine, is safe to dump into the sea, too. Kinda cool if waste dumping ends up being adding more seawater to seawater.
  - eliaspro 5y ago
    This is unfortunately far from the truth. Every major desalination facility is facing this issue, as the highly concentrated brine will create dead zones and won't disperse on its own due to its high density.
aranw 5y ago
I'm still sceptical of batteries being the future of transportation. I believe Hydrogen is a much safer bet. It seems like battery production and materials is not getting much cheaper and only getting more expensive. The equivalent combustion engine cars versus a battery powered car is a lot cheaper
- pydry 5y ago
  >It seems like battery production and materials is not getting much cheaper It might seem that way but they are.
- dean177 5y ago
  I would take that bet. In 5, 10 or 20 years electric vehicles will still vastly outnumber hydrogen powered vehicles.
  - davrosthedalek 5y ago
    Hydrogen powered cars might be electric ;)
  - aranw 5y ago
    I'm betting for anything bigger than a family vehicle to end up being hydrogen just cause the recharge times, weight restrictions, and other factors such as costs
    - SEJeff 5y ago
      Tesla is going to start shipping their Semi next year. I think you’re gonna lose that bet as I’m pretty sure a Semi is a tad bigger than a family vehicle. Granted, they’re developing a new “mega charger” for it, but still. The higher torque allows them to pull the same loads up higher grades faster. Just because they might not (yet) be the best for longhaul trucking doesn’t mean they won’t be amazing for medium to shorter range heavy freight.
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
      At 300Kw charging speed, EV charge fast enough to drink a coffee after 400 miles and continue the trip with 200+ miles of range. We'll probably upgrade the charger to higher speed (Ionity already support 250+Kw) but what's the point? As for the weight, do you know a Model 3 weight roughly as much as the BMW Series 3 (closest competitor)? https://carbuzz.com/compare/bmw-3-series-vs-tesla-model-3#cars=79768-vs-82466 https://carbuzz.com/compare/bmw-3-series-vs-tesla-model-3#ca... It's cheaper, too: https://insideevs.com/features/517960/tesla-model3-bmw-3series-cost/ https://insideevs.com/features/517960/tesla-model3-bmw-3seri...
elmo2you 5y ago
I'm puzzled as to how Tesla managed to get a patent (granted) on this. Maybe it's for a very specific implementation of the extraction process using table salt, but I'd swear this is not a new phenomenon. Nor can phenomenons themselves patented, only specific implementations (which can get practically hairy very quickly, hence the mess the patent system currently is). Sounds to me like yet another attempt, with enough spin to turn a planet, to again try "prove" how Tesla will be a game changer, by presenting something that's rather mediocre and mundane (at best) on closer inspection. Simply put, in all these years (ever since his PayPal days) I have not seen a single thing come from Elon Musk that didn't turn out to involve some kind of clever fraud, business trickery, or downright deception on closer inspection. But apparently a substantial part of today's (global) society just loves to be fooled, rather than pay attention and actually understand things. I guess it's similar to what they say about governments .. we all get the ones we (collectively) deserve.
- DennisP 5y ago
  Weird. I test-drove a Tesla a couple years ago and it seemed pretty real to me. Can you point to a previous implementation of lithium extraction using table salt?
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  >I have not seen a single thing come from Elon Musk that didn't turn out to involve some kind of clever fraud, business trickery, or downright deception on closer inspection. https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-vehicle-deliveries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-v... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Awarded_global_commercial_launch_by_market_share.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Awarded_global_comme...
- nickik 5y ago
  > but I'd swear this is not a new phenomenon. Consider actually reading it, this is pointed out in the text. > by presenting something that's rather mediocre and mundane 0% of global lithium is produced from clay extraction. But I guess its so mediore and mundane that you could easily do it. > Elon Musk that didn't turn out to involve some kind of clever fraud Like when they delivered Astronauts to the Spacestation. Everybody know that that is actually filmed in a desert in Nevada. > But apparently a substantial part of today's (global) society just loves to be fooled Or you know, maybe you are not as smart as you think you are. I know witch one is more likely.
DangerousPie 5y ago
> Tesla is once again at the forefront of electric car technology. Tesla’s new patent incorporates new techniques that no one has seen before (or even really imagined). Tesla’s new patent involves using table salt to mine lithium for use in its batteries. Although lithium is already in use, this new technology is supposed to make it easier and cheaper to get the lithium necessary for Tesla’s batteries. Dose anybody else feel like this was written by a bot? The way that the same information is repeated several times and phrases like "Tesla’s new patent" are reused seem very odd.
- rob74 5y ago
  SEO?
- DennisP 5y ago
  There's also the long quote from Electrek, which they claim "sums up the most important parts," but the quote just describes previous methods. The full Electrek article follows that with Tesla's method. That part is shorter, so you'd think a human would have quoted that instead.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  “Writing very quickly and publishing your first draft” - it’s a popular new technique for increasing productivity.
- ryder9 5y ago
  sounds like me bullshitting on a high school essay to increase the word count
- xkjkls 5y ago
  It was written very lazily and quickly, by someone who knows that getting an article out first is going to be one of the most important things to driving clicks.
- notJim 5y ago
  Whenever I see the pay rates for writing on the internet, I'm amazed more articles don't sound like this.
nickik 5y ago
For those interested 'TheLimitingFactor', the best channel on youtube about batteries has just released a long video on this. https://www.patreon.com/thelimitingfactor/posts https://www.patreon.com/thelimitingfactor/posts It will be like a week or so until it will come out. There is an older video on the topic as well. About Clay mining and potential processes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdvE-UA-xw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdvE-UA-xw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuCK1SJG5gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuCK1SJG5gc And an interview with somebody in the industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfffip_4C80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfffip_4C80 There are certainty people in the industry skeptical of this. No commercial lithium is currently produce from Clay and not with DLE processes. Tesla process will likely require both. While the process Tesla outline is likely possible, if they can do it as cheaply as existing process is questionable. Other companies work on process along the same line, but generally use ACID instead. Joe Lowry from Global Lithium Podcast is very skeptical. He is a industry veteran having worked with Tesla in the past as well. If you want to learn about the lithium industry, I would suggest: https://www.globallithium.net/podcast https://www.globallithium.net/podcast
- ecpottinger 5y ago
  You do realize that has been the standard response of the "experts" to industries the Elon starts to enter. And then "experts" find there are details they overlooked because they knew they were right. Can Elon be wrong? YES. But can the experts be wrong? Happens all the time.
  - qeternity 5y ago
    Elon does not have a long history of process/domain breakthroughs though. SpaceX is doing some very innovative things that ULA never had incentive to do. But otherwise, it’s the same rocketry. Tesla largely same, bucking the expert opinion with Autopilot which seems to be going rather horribly. The Boring company has yet to prove his claims there.
    - eightysixfour 5y ago
mardiyah 5y ago
Anyone outright understand differences and/or similarities this and https://newatlas.com/materials/kaust-lithium-phosphate-llto-hydrogen-desalination/ https://newatlas.com/materials/kaust-lithium-phosphate-llto-... (HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27444976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27444976)
- apendleton 5y ago
  The main source of lithium now is extraction from subsurface brines, mostly in South America (e.g., under salt flats in Bolivia, which is a major producer). Demand is expected to outstrip what these countries can supply as the EV and grid storage markets grow, plus countries with no lithium brines want in on the action, so there are various efforts to find economically competitive approaches to extracting lithium from other sources. Both the story you linked and this new patent are attempts to do that, but harnessing from different sources (seawater and lithium-rich clay, respectively), and using what appear to be unrelated chemical processes.
  - reportingsjr 5y ago
    Just a nit about your first sentence: Australia produces about double what South America does, and most of their lithium comes from processing spodumene. I think a few years your statement would have been correct, but things have been changing very rapidly!
clomond 5y ago
This is directly related to their set of battery day announcements [1]. Some of the key points from their battery day are: - focus on simplifying process from ore to EV in order to maintain cost declines per unit energy while enabling scale up - key to that is simplifying the lithium extraction process (noted patent for this thread), they spoke about the core of this patent before - getting enough factories constructed and dealing with expected limitations in raw material - reducing costs by simplifying manufacturing process / reducing parts - reduce parts by having bigger batteries (also more energy dense) and single casted sections of the vehicles - also interesting work on incorporating Si (which increases energy density) while solving the issue of cycle life when increasing Si ratio. Overall, for anyone even remotely interested in this space and this topic, I think it is an essential watch. [1] keynote starts at 33 mins https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l6T9xIeZTds https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l6T9xIeZTds
- NegativeLatency 5y ago
  Castings or forgings?
  - reportingsjr 5y ago
    Casting, a pretty impressive version of it too! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press
    - misiti3780 5y ago
      There is an awesome youtube video about these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsBbt3TxKGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsBbt3TxKGg Apparently Tesla order the largest one ever, to cast parts for the Cyber Truck
ortusdux 5y ago
I wonder if desalination plant effluent could be used for this process.
SquibblesRedux 5y ago
My first reaction to this headline was, "Wait, how can he be awarded a patent so long after death?"
kovek 5y ago
Tesla is going to work on restaurants and also mining now. It’s interesting that they are widening their scope. I wonder how can a company be so confident in their new pursuits?
MR4D 5y ago
Are mining lithium and refining lithium the same thing, or is it more like other metals?

140 points by mardiyah 5y ago

The actual patent is at https://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=5001&p=101&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20210708.PD.&OS=PD/20210708&RS=PD/20210708 https://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=....

askl 5y ago

Take this report with a grain of salt.

CyanBird 5y ago
HN does not welcome low value comments
- HellDunkel 5y ago
  „humor is devisive“ said some engineer mocking google recently.
- nottorp 5y ago
  HN is afraid of attempts at humour, you mean.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    It's okay to be funny here. It just has to do something for the audience and not waste their time.
- rPlayer6554 5y ago
  You seem a bit....salty.
rpmisms 5y ago
This is a valuable comment that is also a pun. Tesla having a patent on a process does not mean that it's necessarily what they're going to do, simply an option they're exploring. Hence, take this article with a grain of salt.

stupidcar 5y ago

This article they quote from seems like a better source for details : https://electrek.co/2021/07/09/tesla-patent-reveals-elon-musk-table-salt-lithium-extraction-process/ https://electrek.co/2021/07/09/tesla-patent-reveals-elon-mus...

SEJeff 5y ago
Electrek is a glorified Tesla fanboi (Fredrick Lambert) blog which often skews reality. I'd never put "better source" and Electrek in the same sentence. I'm saying this as a Tesla owner mind you!
- nickik 5y ago
  Lambert is often very competitive with Tesla and Elon doesn't like him for that reason. He is often very critical of Tesla. He never responds Electrek like he does some other blogs of that type. He far better sources on Tesla then most people. Certainty most other websites that run with this news. He has broken news on Tesla multiple times. Electrek has strongly moved in the direction of covering all EV launches and reporting on all of that while giving good press to all the other automakers. Accusing them of being just a Tesla fanblog is simply wrong. Maybe 5 years ago when Tesla was the only game in town this was more correct, but its not today.
- relativ575 5y ago
  He is clearly a Tesla fan, and usually covers Tesla in favor light. He is far from the fanboy however, and even addressed fanboyism issue specifically: https://electrek.co/2021/04/05/tesla-toxic-superfans-giving-community-a-bad-name-stories-go-mainstream/ https://electrek.co/2021/04/05/tesla-toxic-superfans-giving-... Tesla still gets majority of coverage, understandably given that they were pretty much the only game in town until a few years ago (Nissan Leaf notwithstanding), but EV vehicles and motorbikes in general are very well presented.
  - SEJeff 5y ago
    If you’ve read Electrek for awhile, you’ll note that he sensationalizes virtually everything. He also over simplifies or just blatantly takes things out of context. He does this while trying to make Electrek appear as an actual news website when it is literally just a fanboi blog. He misrepresents the news. This is why much of what he has to say should be taken with a grain of salt.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

More like a lithium extraction patent. Table salt is involved in the extraction process. This has nothing to do with what the title made me envision: Tesla is diversifying into the food business or something?

sharken 5y ago
Yes, the title reads more like click bait, perhaps because the title "SELECTIVE EXTRACTION OF LITHIUM FROM CLAY MINERALS" from the patent application would not generate enough clicks. Apart from the semi-novel concept here, the word "about" is used frequently in the patent. It seems very hard to make something useful with the patent, with the uncertainty this introduces. Is that standard procedure ?
tempodox 5y ago
Yep, my first thought was, I'll have to pay license fees now for putting salt on my meal.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  But only for table salt. This could be a huge boon for kosher salt and sea salt.
  - rob74 5y ago
    Table salt, kosher salt, sea salt... it's all NaCl to me!
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
      Someone needs to read labels and find out what they are actually putting in their mouths. ;) (Kosher salt is probably the only one on that list that is just NaCl. Table salt has an anticaking ingredient added, thus the catch phrase "when it rains, it pours" (because untreated salt clumps), and usually also has iodine added. Sea salt typically has a mix of other minerals found naturally in sea water and may be as little as 86 percent NaCl. There is also canning and pickling salt which is also possibly just NaCl. Pink Himalayan mountain salt contains iron, iirc, thus the pink coloring.) Edited to add winky and parantheses to try to signal "That first line was intended as lighthearded humor". I mostly suck at being funny. Droning on about things I know too much about is more my speed.

patrickk 5y ago

Whenever I hear "salt" and "battery" in the same sentence, I think of Sodium Ion batteries. Similar to lithium (neighbours on the periodic table), even cheaper and more abundant, and because sodium is heavier it should be strongly considered for stationary storage. I guess I'd need to consult that skeptical HN list on new battery tech to understand why it's not widely deployed yet!

maxerickson 5y ago
The huge investment in lithium-ion has stayed ahead of any materials cost advantage (so lithium-ion has been cheaper for all applications, in addition to being better for applications where density and weight matter).
- patrickk 5y ago
  Indeed, good point. A shame really, as sodium could ease supply constraints and take up some of the burden instead of just lithium.
Symmetry 5y ago
Nifty. At first I thought you were talking about molten sodium batteries, which have been around for a while but inconveniently have to be kept at high temperatures to keep the sodium liquid and so haven't seen much adoption. But yeah, sodium ion batteries are now a thing and don't have that limitation.

sschueller 5y ago

"Tesla has filed a patent detailing a new way to mine for the lithium necessary for batteries. The concept isn’t new; " So which is it?

mtgx 5y ago
Tesla pretends the concept is new to get the patent. The concept isn't actually new. Would be far from the first time patents were granted this way...
kenjackson 5y ago
The article seems to imply that it was disclosed last year. Not the details of it, but the high level idea. Hi think the author should have said instead “but we first heard about the concept last year from Tesla”
- SEJeff 5y ago
  Elon mentioned it at their “battery day” event and everyone sort of laughed about it.
xvector 5y ago
The rest of the sentence clarifies. Usually it's a good idea to read past the semicolon: "The concept isn’t new; Tesla CEO Elon Musk first mentioned it at last year’s battery day."

NullPrefix 5y ago

>According to Electrek, which has gotten hold of Tesla’s new patent Aren't patents supposed to be public?

cjblomqvist 5y ago
Not necessarily before they're accepted I guess?
rwbhn 5y ago
It is. https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2021138345&_cid=P11-KR66GK-50560-1 https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO20...
fouc 5y ago
"gotten hold of" aka "looked it up"
- justaguy88 5y ago
  To be fair, even doing that is a lot compared to some news sources
  - brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
    True, but really, it's not that much work. News media needs to get back to true journalism. (Sorry to soapbox, I just hate the state of "news" these days)
xkjkls 5y ago
They are. Electrek just likes overstating their own importance.
totalZero 5y ago
They aren't typically published by the USPTO until 18 months after the priority date. https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s1120.html https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s1120.html

soco 5y ago

I have so much trust in the patent system that first I thought they were granted a patent on table salt.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Those were my first thoughts as well!
sgdesign 5y ago
Me too! I actually thought maybe they did that as a way to prove the absurdity of the patent system.
davrosthedalek 5y ago
I expected that Tesla got a patent on table salt and that some crazy Tesla fan (not every Tesla fan is crazy, but some are, as it happens with fans almost universally) is actually trying to sell it as a good thing.
- simonh 5y ago
  It's fantastic because the revenue Tesla gets from everyone licensing table salt will be used to massively expand electric car production and shift us away from fossil fuels.
  - davrosthedalek 5y ago
    I saw a salt package recently which was labeled "Urmeersalz" = "primeval see salt". It was a bag of rock salt.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      It’s like sodium and chlorine atoms could have a pedigree… :-D
    - gerikson 5y ago
      Technically correct as rock salt was formed by the evaporation of ancient seas.

deregulateMed 5y ago

"but Tesla gave away their patents to help humanity." I remember that marketing trick. "Change the world" I remember that one too. Now I'm a skeptic. I just can't get excited about Tesla claims anymore. My brain has developed defensive mechanisms against their propaganda/PR machine.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
>their propaganda/PR machine You mean Elon's tweets? Because Tesla has, by far, the tiniest "propaganda/PR machine" in their industry. Do you have any idea how much their competitors spend on PR, advertising and lobbying? Also, how much their suppliers and partners (e.g oil and gas) bring to the table?
- eloff 5y ago
  The money they don't spend on advertising is a huge part of their competitive advantage.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
> "but Tesla gave away their patents to help humanity." (...) "Change the world" (...) They did, tho. They've pretty much forced the worldwide electrification of cars to happen, in spite of the market wanted. That's a huge help for humanity and a big change to the world. It's funny you should become skeptical over the rare case where pretentious slogans were actually true.
- foepys 5y ago
  > They did, tho. They did give away their patents under the condition that everybody using them cannot sue Tesla. It's a bad deal for every other automaker because they either have far larger and far more specific patent pools or if they don't have patents, Tesla can steal every idea they will ever have. The whole thing was marketing bs from the very start. Tesla knew that nobody would take them up on the offer and in fact, literally nobody did.

aranw 5y ago

Is it just me or is everything that Tesla, SpaceX, <name of musk business>... is doing something that is "game changing" feel like everyone massively over hypes what there doing

wongarsu 5y ago
Tesla did change the game in automotive, creating a viable market for pure electric cars. SpaceX did change the game for space launch providers, proving that it's a viable and profitable business for startups with reasonable funding. Today we have lots of startups in the market competing for different niches, before SpaceX there were only slow moving giants like Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Of course the press likes to pump up the hype and will subsequently call everything they do game-changing. But it could be justified in this case. This could be game changing for lithium mining. And that's a game we are all somewhat invested in because of how prevalent lithium batteries have become in the last two decades.
- leereeves 5y ago
  > before SpaceX there were only slow moving giants like Boeing and Northrop Grumman. SpaceX gets all the media attention, but Blue Origin was actually founded before SpaceX.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    Blue Origin gets little media attention because their list of accomplishments is rather short. The seem to make good engines, but in the time SpaceX has developed the Falcon 1, the Falcon 9 (and launched it 120 times), the Falcon 9 heavy, and a human rated capsule that has made multiple crew launches to the ISS, Blue Origin has managed to develop one demonstrator that reached about 90 meters, and the suborbital New Shepard that is now finally about to have its first commercial launch. They certainly weren't involved in any game changing activities yet. They might play a significant role in bringing about space tourism, but that's yet to be seen.
    - 5y ago

grumpy-de-sre 5y ago

Quite a lot of dismissive comments here but the patent actually sounds very promising. I'm not familiar with the state of the art in the space but according to the patent the conventional approach involves acid leaching lithium rich clay. Tesla's approach involves exchanging lithium cations from the clay using a sodium chloride brine solution, mechanical agitation, and heat. The end result is a lithium rich brine that can be processed using conventional approaches and doesn't involve consuming large amounts of acid. Brine is also a lot easier to manage from an environmental perspective than strong mineral acids.

orwin 5y ago
and might use a lot less CO2.
RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
Perhaps couple with de-salination?
rpmisms 5y ago
Brine, if it's actually brine, is safe to dump into the sea, too. Kinda cool if waste dumping ends up being adding more seawater to seawater.
- eliaspro 5y ago
  This is unfortunately far from the truth. Every major desalination facility is facing this issue, as the highly concentrated brine will create dead zones and won't disperse on its own due to its high density.

aranw 5y ago

I'm still sceptical of batteries being the future of transportation. I believe Hydrogen is a much safer bet. It seems like battery production and materials is not getting much cheaper and only getting more expensive. The equivalent combustion engine cars versus a battery powered car is a lot cheaper

pydry 5y ago
>It seems like battery production and materials is not getting much cheaper It might seem that way but they are.
dean177 5y ago
I would take that bet. In 5, 10 or 20 years electric vehicles will still vastly outnumber hydrogen powered vehicles.
- davrosthedalek 5y ago
  Hydrogen powered cars might be electric ;)
- aranw 5y ago
  I'm betting for anything bigger than a family vehicle to end up being hydrogen just cause the recharge times, weight restrictions, and other factors such as costs
  - SEJeff 5y ago
    Tesla is going to start shipping their Semi next year. I think you’re gonna lose that bet as I’m pretty sure a Semi is a tad bigger than a family vehicle. Granted, they’re developing a new “mega charger” for it, but still. The higher torque allows them to pull the same loads up higher grades faster. Just because they might not (yet) be the best for longhaul trucking doesn’t mean they won’t be amazing for medium to shorter range heavy freight.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
    At 300Kw charging speed, EV charge fast enough to drink a coffee after 400 miles and continue the trip with 200+ miles of range. We'll probably upgrade the charger to higher speed (Ionity already support 250+Kw) but what's the point? As for the weight, do you know a Model 3 weight roughly as much as the BMW Series 3 (closest competitor)? https://carbuzz.com/compare/bmw-3-series-vs-tesla-model-3#cars=79768-vs-82466 https://carbuzz.com/compare/bmw-3-series-vs-tesla-model-3#ca... It's cheaper, too: https://insideevs.com/features/517960/tesla-model3-bmw-3series-cost/ https://insideevs.com/features/517960/tesla-model3-bmw-3seri...

elmo2you 5y ago

I'm puzzled as to how Tesla managed to get a patent (granted) on this. Maybe it's for a very specific implementation of the extraction process using table salt, but I'd swear this is not a new phenomenon. Nor can phenomenons themselves patented, only specific implementations (which can get practically hairy very quickly, hence the mess the patent system currently is). Sounds to me like yet another attempt, with enough spin to turn a planet, to again try "prove" how Tesla will be a game changer, by presenting something that's rather mediocre and mundane (at best) on closer inspection. Simply put, in all these years (ever since his PayPal days) I have not seen a single thing come from Elon Musk that didn't turn out to involve some kind of clever fraud, business trickery, or downright deception on closer inspection. But apparently a substantial part of today's (global) society just loves to be fooled, rather than pay attention and actually understand things. I guess it's similar to what they say about governments .. we all get the ones we (collectively) deserve.

DennisP 5y ago
Weird. I test-drove a Tesla a couple years ago and it seemed pretty real to me. Can you point to a previous implementation of lithium extraction using table salt?
rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
>I have not seen a single thing come from Elon Musk that didn't turn out to involve some kind of clever fraud, business trickery, or downright deception on closer inspection. https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-vehicle-deliveries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-v... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Awarded_global_commercial_launch_by_market_share.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Awarded_global_comme...
nickik 5y ago
> but I'd swear this is not a new phenomenon. Consider actually reading it, this is pointed out in the text. > by presenting something that's rather mediocre and mundane 0% of global lithium is produced from clay extraction. But I guess its so mediore and mundane that you could easily do it. > Elon Musk that didn't turn out to involve some kind of clever fraud Like when they delivered Astronauts to the Spacestation. Everybody know that that is actually filmed in a desert in Nevada. > But apparently a substantial part of today's (global) society just loves to be fooled Or you know, maybe you are not as smart as you think you are. I know witch one is more likely.

DangerousPie 5y ago

> Tesla is once again at the forefront of electric car technology. Tesla’s new patent incorporates new techniques that no one has seen before (or even really imagined). Tesla’s new patent involves using table salt to mine lithium for use in its batteries. Although lithium is already in use, this new technology is supposed to make it easier and cheaper to get the lithium necessary for Tesla’s batteries. Dose anybody else feel like this was written by a bot? The way that the same information is repeated several times and phrases like "Tesla’s new patent" are reused seem very odd.

rob74 5y ago
SEO?
DennisP 5y ago
There's also the long quote from Electrek, which they claim "sums up the most important parts," but the quote just describes previous methods. The full Electrek article follows that with Tesla's method. That part is shorter, so you'd think a human would have quoted that instead.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
“Writing very quickly and publishing your first draft” - it’s a popular new technique for increasing productivity.
ryder9 5y ago
sounds like me bullshitting on a high school essay to increase the word count
xkjkls 5y ago
It was written very lazily and quickly, by someone who knows that getting an article out first is going to be one of the most important things to driving clicks.
notJim 5y ago
Whenever I see the pay rates for writing on the internet, I'm amazed more articles don't sound like this.

nickik 5y ago

For those interested 'TheLimitingFactor', the best channel on youtube about batteries has just released a long video on this. https://www.patreon.com/thelimitingfactor/posts https://www.patreon.com/thelimitingfactor/posts It will be like a week or so until it will come out. There is an older video on the topic as well. About Clay mining and potential processes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdvE-UA-xw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdvE-UA-xw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuCK1SJG5gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuCK1SJG5gc And an interview with somebody in the industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfffip_4C80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfffip_4C80 There are certainty people in the industry skeptical of this. No commercial lithium is currently produce from Clay and not with DLE processes. Tesla process will likely require both. While the process Tesla outline is likely possible, if they can do it as cheaply as existing process is questionable. Other companies work on process along the same line, but generally use ACID instead. Joe Lowry from Global Lithium Podcast is very skeptical. He is a industry veteran having worked with Tesla in the past as well. If you want to learn about the lithium industry, I would suggest: https://www.globallithium.net/podcast https://www.globallithium.net/podcast

ecpottinger 5y ago
You do realize that has been the standard response of the "experts" to industries the Elon starts to enter. And then "experts" find there are details they overlooked because they knew they were right. Can Elon be wrong? YES. But can the experts be wrong? Happens all the time.
- qeternity 5y ago
  Elon does not have a long history of process/domain breakthroughs though. SpaceX is doing some very innovative things that ULA never had incentive to do. But otherwise, it’s the same rocketry. Tesla largely same, bucking the expert opinion with Autopilot which seems to be going rather horribly. The Boring company has yet to prove his claims there.
  - eightysixfour 5y ago

mardiyah 5y ago

Anyone outright understand differences and/or similarities this and https://newatlas.com/materials/kaust-lithium-phosphate-llto-hydrogen-desalination/ https://newatlas.com/materials/kaust-lithium-phosphate-llto-... (HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27444976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27444976)

apendleton 5y ago
The main source of lithium now is extraction from subsurface brines, mostly in South America (e.g., under salt flats in Bolivia, which is a major producer). Demand is expected to outstrip what these countries can supply as the EV and grid storage markets grow, plus countries with no lithium brines want in on the action, so there are various efforts to find economically competitive approaches to extracting lithium from other sources. Both the story you linked and this new patent are attempts to do that, but harnessing from different sources (seawater and lithium-rich clay, respectively), and using what appear to be unrelated chemical processes.
- reportingsjr 5y ago
  Just a nit about your first sentence: Australia produces about double what South America does, and most of their lithium comes from processing spodumene. I think a few years your statement would have been correct, but things have been changing very rapidly!

clomond 5y ago

This is directly related to their set of battery day announcements [1]. Some of the key points from their battery day are: - focus on simplifying process from ore to EV in order to maintain cost declines per unit energy while enabling scale up - key to that is simplifying the lithium extraction process (noted patent for this thread), they spoke about the core of this patent before - getting enough factories constructed and dealing with expected limitations in raw material - reducing costs by simplifying manufacturing process / reducing parts - reduce parts by having bigger batteries (also more energy dense) and single casted sections of the vehicles - also interesting work on incorporating Si (which increases energy density) while solving the issue of cycle life when increasing Si ratio. Overall, for anyone even remotely interested in this space and this topic, I think it is an essential watch. [1] keynote starts at 33 mins https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l6T9xIeZTds https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l6T9xIeZTds

NegativeLatency 5y ago
Castings or forgings?
- reportingsjr 5y ago
  Casting, a pretty impressive version of it too! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press
  - misiti3780 5y ago
    There is an awesome youtube video about these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsBbt3TxKGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsBbt3TxKGg Apparently Tesla order the largest one ever, to cast parts for the Cyber Truck

ortusdux 5y ago

I wonder if desalination plant effluent could be used for this process.

SquibblesRedux 5y ago

My first reaction to this headline was, "Wait, how can he be awarded a patent so long after death?"

kovek 5y ago

Tesla is going to work on restaurants and also mining now. It’s interesting that they are widening their scope. I wonder how can a company be so confident in their new pursuits?

MR4D 5y ago

Are mining lithium and refining lithium the same thing, or is it more like other metals?