10 ms·

The race to grab all the UK’s lithium before it’s too late

53 points by Digit-Al 5y ago

pjc50 5y ago
> You’re mining two million tonnes of rock to make 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate. 1% by weight. Oof. Iron ores are more in the 20% range.
- rmm 5y ago
  You can’t compare the two. Most open pit gold mines average 2-4g/tonne or 0.0002%
  - lm28469 5y ago
    It's ok because we don't need 10kg of gold per car battery, with 1.5b vehicles on earth that adds up quickly. Gold is still mostly used for jewelry and investment, its rarity and price aren't really a problem for these, quite the contrary
    - maxsilver 5y ago
      We don't really need all of that for cars either. We could build 5 or 6 Chevy Volts with the same battery capacity as a single Tesla, and each of those Volts (with daily charging) would still almost never need to burn gas. (I'm the second owner of my Chevy Volt, with 60,000k miles on it, it has a real-world car-recorded all-lifetime average of 181 MPG). We're building every EV car to handle every possible EV-only road trip because we can and because it's cool, not because it's actually necessary. We could still eliminate 90%+ of all road emissions instantly with just PHEV's using much smaller batteries, if some sort of lithium shortage made such a thing necessary.
      - HPsquared 5y ago
        It comes down to economics, whether or not it costs more to add an internal combustion engine, ancillaries, generator etc. than it does for the additional battery cells.
    - rmm 5y ago
      I used gold as a random example. Highest grade copper mines 3-4% Zinc mines and other base metals sit at 2-3%
    - HPsquared 5y ago
      You don't need 10kg of gold, but you do need about 5g of platinum group metals for the catalytic converter. Not sure how many tonnes of rock that is, and how it compares to electric car batteries, but it's not nothing.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  In fairness, lithium is 8 times lighter than iron atomically...
- Chris2048 5y ago
  But it's notable that the formation of iron-rich ore was a biological process that happened a long time ago. Also, the iron would have originally been leached via saltwater from iron exposed to the sea, which given iron is 5.6% of the crust, is a lot vs (way) less than 0.1% for lithium.
dboreham 5y ago
This sounds unlikely: "This takes a lot of energy: around five per cent of the electricity generated globally is spent crushing rocks in lithium mining."
- beached_whale 5y ago
  I have heard that globally about 2% of energy goes to crushing rocks. Or so said years ago a government geologist I was chatting with. But I am thinking they meant harder ores in general So 5% isn’t that far off.
  - tokai 5y ago
    If 2% of global energy goes in to crushing rocks - in general. Then 5% to crushing lithium is so far off that its hilarious, unless nearly all rocks crushed are crushed for lithium.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Was about to comment on the same quote. And if true, wow that’s a chunky carbon footprint on green car batteries!
  - dijit 5y ago
    If you've been paying attention then it's quite clear that buying a new electric car is not always green. If you're trading in a car that's less than 5 years old, then it takes a long time to offset the "new car" footprint. Electric cars also do not care how the power is sourced, and if it's coal then can actually add more carbon to the environment than a petrol car. Not everything is black and white, electric cars are definitely able to be more green than petrol ones and centralising the power generation will help keep our cities less polluted too.
    - adrianN 5y ago
      New EVs are a net benefit over new ICE cars for almost all usage patterns. Only for extremely low yearly mileage over the whole lifespan of the car can an ICE car come out ahead, even if you consider the current electricity mix and ignore any future growth of renewables on the grid.
29athrowaway 5y ago
Now you can get lithium from saltwater.
_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
Germany also recently found large deposits of Lithium. It's not quite clear yet how economical it will be to extract them: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/can-rhines-white-gold-power-germanys-green-e-car-race-2021-04-28/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/can-rh...
rmm 5y ago
Being in the mining industry I can see that I will have a huge Gell-Mann amnesia effect coming after reading this article. It’s so cringy Urgh.
- jefftk 5y ago
  Could you say more about what you don't like about it?
  - rmm 5y ago
    The first half of the article describes regular exploration geology like its some unique process these company’s are doing. All for a 20ktpa lithium mine, which wouldn’t pass feasibility in a pro mining environment like Australia let alone the Cornish country side. Also it confuses what it’s actually mining. You don’t mine lithium carbonate directly.
- beardyw 5y ago
  Somehow I can never remember what that means, ironically. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
lm28469 5y ago
I wonder if lithium will give us the same geopolitical results as petrol, ie. massive unstability, wars, puppet governments, &c. [0] Afghanistan could be a major player [1]. It all feels like we're repeating history, I wouldn't be surprised experts in 2050-75 will tell us we fucked up big times with lithium battery vehicles, lithium extraction seems to be already quite energy intensive and pretty dirty, it doesn't seem like it'll get easier with time either, especially with the exponentially growing demand. EV feels like the last adrenaline shot trying to keep the beast of personal/individual transportation alive, between Scylla and Charybdis.... [0] https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/092970-001-A/petrol-a-story-of-power/ https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/092970-001-A/petrol-a-story-of... [1] https://www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/global-players-eyeing-afghanistan-vast-mineral-reserves-1846218-2021-08-27 https://www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/global-players-eyeing-af...
- rmm 5y ago
  It won’t. Lithium is everywhere. No one’s been looking for it until recently. 20years ago it’s biggest use was industrial lubrication etc. Also recyclability hasn’t even been truly tested and looks promising. A new battery tech will come long before lithium becomes scarce.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    Everything is everywhere, it's just a matter of being economically viable to reach, extract and process.
    - jjoonathan 5y ago
      We're still finding new ways to scale oil production 100 years after demand exploded. Lithium demand is new. If we can't get enough Lithium, it's almost certainly for logistics reasons rather than because it's a fundamentally intractable problem.
- xoa 5y ago
  >I wonder if lithium will give us the same geopolitical results as petrol Highly doubtful. Lithium is one of the most common elements, and the oceans contain hundreds of billions of tons of dissolved lithium. The concentrations are low, but there is plenty of research on sea water extraction [ie., 0] which also may dovetail very nicely with other efforts like desalination (using the resulting concentrated brine), and we're moving to a world with a lot of potential cheap solar/wind energy that will result in extraneous power in need of economic applications. Lithium is also very recyclable. Places with more lucky concentrated lithium certainly can have some economic advantages in pricing, but not in fundamental supply as happens with fossil fuels. At the end of the day that sets a pretty hard ceiling on global pricing, let alone strategic level pricing. Any first world nation with any coast could embark on sea water extraction if they felt it was important enough, combined with aggressive recycling operations, and then just be set. Very different dynamic then consumable fossil fuels. Edit to your other post: >Everything is everywhere That obviously isn't true, oil isn't everywhere. Lots of places simply don't have any domestically at all, at any price. And it's a fuel, unlike lithium. It gets used up. Obviously getting together all the infrastructure for a lithium using energy economy is going to cost a lot, but so did (and does) fossil fuel infrastructure. And surely many countries won't actually bother because of comparative advantage elsewhere, but the fact that they could naturally will reduce the geopolitical leverage. ---- 0: Innovative lithium recovery technique from seawater by using world-first dialysis with a lithium ionic superconductor : https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.12.018 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.12.0...

53 points by Digit-Al 5y ago

> You’re mining two million tonnes of rock to make 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate. 1% by weight. Oof. Iron ores are more in the 20% range.

rmm 5y ago
You can’t compare the two. Most open pit gold mines average 2-4g/tonne or 0.0002%
- lm28469 5y ago
  It's ok because we don't need 10kg of gold per car battery, with 1.5b vehicles on earth that adds up quickly. Gold is still mostly used for jewelry and investment, its rarity and price aren't really a problem for these, quite the contrary
  - maxsilver 5y ago
    We don't really need all of that for cars either. We could build 5 or 6 Chevy Volts with the same battery capacity as a single Tesla, and each of those Volts (with daily charging) would still almost never need to burn gas. (I'm the second owner of my Chevy Volt, with 60,000k miles on it, it has a real-world car-recorded all-lifetime average of 181 MPG). We're building every EV car to handle every possible EV-only road trip because we can and because it's cool, not because it's actually necessary. We could still eliminate 90%+ of all road emissions instantly with just PHEV's using much smaller batteries, if some sort of lithium shortage made such a thing necessary.
    - HPsquared 5y ago
      It comes down to economics, whether or not it costs more to add an internal combustion engine, ancillaries, generator etc. than it does for the additional battery cells.
  - rmm 5y ago
    I used gold as a random example. Highest grade copper mines 3-4% Zinc mines and other base metals sit at 2-3%
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    You don't need 10kg of gold, but you do need about 5g of platinum group metals for the catalytic converter. Not sure how many tonnes of rock that is, and how it compares to electric car batteries, but it's not nothing.
LatteLazy 5y ago
In fairness, lithium is 8 times lighter than iron atomically...
Chris2048 5y ago
But it's notable that the formation of iron-rich ore was a biological process that happened a long time ago. Also, the iron would have originally been leached via saltwater from iron exposed to the sea, which given iron is 5.6% of the crust, is a lot vs (way) less than 0.1% for lithium.

dboreham 5y ago

This sounds unlikely: "This takes a lot of energy: around five per cent of the electricity generated globally is spent crushing rocks in lithium mining."

beached_whale 5y ago
I have heard that globally about 2% of energy goes to crushing rocks. Or so said years ago a government geologist I was chatting with. But I am thinking they meant harder ores in general So 5% isn’t that far off.
- tokai 5y ago
  If 2% of global energy goes in to crushing rocks - in general. Then 5% to crushing lithium is so far off that its hilarious, unless nearly all rocks crushed are crushed for lithium.
rich_sasha 5y ago
Was about to comment on the same quote. And if true, wow that’s a chunky carbon footprint on green car batteries!
- dijit 5y ago
  If you've been paying attention then it's quite clear that buying a new electric car is not always green. If you're trading in a car that's less than 5 years old, then it takes a long time to offset the "new car" footprint. Electric cars also do not care how the power is sourced, and if it's coal then can actually add more carbon to the environment than a petrol car. Not everything is black and white, electric cars are definitely able to be more green than petrol ones and centralising the power generation will help keep our cities less polluted too.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    New EVs are a net benefit over new ICE cars for almost all usage patterns. Only for extremely low yearly mileage over the whole lifespan of the car can an ICE car come out ahead, even if you consider the current electricity mix and ignore any future growth of renewables on the grid.

29athrowaway 5y ago

Now you can get lithium from saltwater.

_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago

Germany also recently found large deposits of Lithium. It's not quite clear yet how economical it will be to extract them: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/can-rhines-white-gold-power-germanys-green-e-car-race-2021-04-28/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/can-rh...

rmm 5y ago

Being in the mining industry I can see that I will have a huge Gell-Mann amnesia effect coming after reading this article. It’s so cringy Urgh.

jefftk 5y ago
Could you say more about what you don't like about it?
- rmm 5y ago
  The first half of the article describes regular exploration geology like its some unique process these company’s are doing. All for a 20ktpa lithium mine, which wouldn’t pass feasibility in a pro mining environment like Australia let alone the Cornish country side. Also it confuses what it’s actually mining. You don’t mine lithium carbonate directly.
beardyw 5y ago
Somehow I can never remember what that means, ironically. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

lm28469 5y ago

I wonder if lithium will give us the same geopolitical results as petrol, ie. massive unstability, wars, puppet governments, &c. [0] Afghanistan could be a major player [1]. It all feels like we're repeating history, I wouldn't be surprised experts in 2050-75 will tell us we fucked up big times with lithium battery vehicles, lithium extraction seems to be already quite energy intensive and pretty dirty, it doesn't seem like it'll get easier with time either, especially with the exponentially growing demand. EV feels like the last adrenaline shot trying to keep the beast of personal/individual transportation alive, between Scylla and Charybdis.... [0] https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/092970-001-A/petrol-a-story-of-power/ https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/092970-001-A/petrol-a-story-of... [1] https://www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/global-players-eyeing-afghanistan-vast-mineral-reserves-1846218-2021-08-27 https://www.indiatoday.in/diu/story/global-players-eyeing-af...

rmm 5y ago
It won’t. Lithium is everywhere. No one’s been looking for it until recently. 20years ago it’s biggest use was industrial lubrication etc. Also recyclability hasn’t even been truly tested and looks promising. A new battery tech will come long before lithium becomes scarce.
- lm28469 5y ago
  Everything is everywhere, it's just a matter of being economically viable to reach, extract and process.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    We're still finding new ways to scale oil production 100 years after demand exploded. Lithium demand is new. If we can't get enough Lithium, it's almost certainly for logistics reasons rather than because it's a fundamentally intractable problem.
xoa 5y ago
>I wonder if lithium will give us the same geopolitical results as petrol Highly doubtful. Lithium is one of the most common elements, and the oceans contain hundreds of billions of tons of dissolved lithium. The concentrations are low, but there is plenty of research on sea water extraction [ie., 0] which also may dovetail very nicely with other efforts like desalination (using the resulting concentrated brine), and we're moving to a world with a lot of potential cheap solar/wind energy that will result in extraneous power in need of economic applications. Lithium is also very recyclable. Places with more lucky concentrated lithium certainly can have some economic advantages in pricing, but not in fundamental supply as happens with fossil fuels. At the end of the day that sets a pretty hard ceiling on global pricing, let alone strategic level pricing. Any first world nation with any coast could embark on sea water extraction if they felt it was important enough, combined with aggressive recycling operations, and then just be set. Very different dynamic then consumable fossil fuels. Edit to your other post: >Everything is everywhere That obviously isn't true, oil isn't everywhere. Lots of places simply don't have any domestically at all, at any price. And it's a fuel, unlike lithium. It gets used up. Obviously getting together all the infrastructure for a lithium using energy economy is going to cost a lot, but so did (and does) fossil fuel infrastructure. And surely many countries won't actually bother because of comparative advantage elsewhere, but the fact that they could naturally will reduce the geopolitical leverage. ---- 0: Innovative lithium recovery technique from seawater by using world-first dialysis with a lithium ionic superconductor : https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.12.018 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.12.0...