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Ha. Now we get to think about both lithium and zinc reserves among geopolitical rivals...but it does appear that zinc it about 100x more abundant than Lithium.

mschuster91 3y ago
You can always go and extract lithium from sea water. At the moment we're just pumping the brine from desalination plants back into the sea, but if we want we could add extractors there [2]. Also, while I generally agree on sounding the "divest from China, Russia and other enemy nations" bullhorn, with Australia and Canada there are close allies of ours among suppliers [1] and Chile and Argentinia may not be allies but at least neutral so we can broker deals with them. The problem is more in the refinement of said lithium and the manufacture of batteries. For environmental and cost reasons, most countries were OK with having that shit done in China, but nowadays there's serious capability built up in the US and EU. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/268790/countries-with-the-largest-lithium-reserves-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/268790/countries-with-th... [2] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/em/c8em00498f https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/em/c8em0...
- flangola7 3y ago
  Why is there lithium in the sea?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - notamy 3y ago
    Brine is a source of a lot of minerals, apparently! TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_mining
  - Joker_vD 3y ago
    Because the rest of the periodic table is also there? I don't know what else to say: if there is something in the Earth's crust then it is in the Earth's ocean as well. Where do you think all the water came from anyhow?
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      Most metals form chemical compounds that have poor solubility in water, therefore even if they are present in sea water, their concentration is extremely small. The only metals that are abundant in sea water, due to the high solubility of their compounds, are the alkali metals and the alkaline-earth metals, more precisely the eight metals lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium. (beryllium is not an alkaline-earth metal, despite the fact that most chemistry manuals group it with the alkaline-earth metals, because it is believed that simple minds will easier remember simplified classifications, even if they are only approximately true, while cesium is extremely rare and, due to that, it remains rare in sea water too) For any of these 8 metals, it can be profitable to extract them from sea water, where they exist in huge quantities. For the other metals, which are present only in tiny quantities in sea water, it is likely that the great amount of energy needed to separate them from sea water makes their extraction not worthwhile.
      - Joker_vD 3y ago
        There is also e.g. uranium in the ocean, Japanese even attempted to extract it; and it worked but was like, 10 times costlier than just buying the uranium mined normally? So yeah, there is pretty much everything in the ocean, there is usually just no economical sense to try and extract stuff from it.
        scythe 3y ago
        Uranium is more concentrated in the ocean than other transition metals because it forms a stable anion (UO4(2-), IIRC). The most abundant transition metal in the ocean is actually molybdenum, followed by vanadium; most TMs have negligible solubility. But lithium with its high solubility is much more abundant in the ocean than any transition metal. Bromine is even more abundant than lithium in the ocean, but we don't extract it from the ocean; most of the world's bromine comes from the Dead Sea, and despite the location the supplies of Br is considered secure and the price is low. Processing large quantities of seawater is annoying, even though the energy cost in principle is attainable.
  - s0rce 3y ago
    Minerals in the ocean come from rocks either from runoff eroding rocks or from undersea vents https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/whysalty.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/whysalty.html Since there is no outflow for these minerals the ocean has become salty over time.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    It's just another salt I suppose, anything soluble ends up getting washed in there. The question is, "why is the water on land not salty?" answer: it all got washed into the sea. The water keeps going in a cycle, evaporating and raining, but the salt stays in the sea.
  - olddustytrail 3y ago
    Also, see where Lithium is in the periodic table. Right above Sodium. So you expect it to form salts just like Sodium and the sea is famously salty!
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Lithium is not rare, it's not going to lead to the development of new Saudi Arabias, and the lithium in batteries can be indefinitely recycled. I wish people would stop trying to paint the energy future along these lines. It's a fossil fuel rip-it-and-ship-it mindset from the past bolted onto the future and it's often propagated by people who an $$ interest in keeping things the way things are, or are trying to pump some new temporary get-rich-scheme ("harvest lithium from abandoned oil wells!" "buy these penny lithium stocks" etc)
- Detrytus 3y ago
  Lithium, as an element is not rare, but the deposits that are economically viable to mine are. I keep hearing about extracting lithium from seawater, but no one so far have come up with viable technology. Funny thing is: laws like EU's one that demands all new cars be electric by 2035 will lead to lithium shortages, which means Lithium batteries will become much more expensive in the next few decades.

mschuster91 3y ago

You can always go and extract lithium from sea water. At the moment we're just pumping the brine from desalination plants back into the sea, but if we want we could add extractors there [2]. Also, while I generally agree on sounding the "divest from China, Russia and other enemy nations" bullhorn, with Australia and Canada there are close allies of ours among suppliers [1] and Chile and Argentinia may not be allies but at least neutral so we can broker deals with them. The problem is more in the refinement of said lithium and the manufacture of batteries. For environmental and cost reasons, most countries were OK with having that shit done in China, but nowadays there's serious capability built up in the US and EU. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/268790/countries-with-the-largest-lithium-reserves-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/268790/countries-with-th... [2] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/em/c8em00498f https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/em/c8em0...

flangola7 3y ago
Why is there lithium in the sea?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- notamy 3y ago
  Brine is a source of a lot of minerals, apparently! TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_mining
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  Because the rest of the periodic table is also there? I don't know what else to say: if there is something in the Earth's crust then it is in the Earth's ocean as well. Where do you think all the water came from anyhow?
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    Most metals form chemical compounds that have poor solubility in water, therefore even if they are present in sea water, their concentration is extremely small. The only metals that are abundant in sea water, due to the high solubility of their compounds, are the alkali metals and the alkaline-earth metals, more precisely the eight metals lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium. (beryllium is not an alkaline-earth metal, despite the fact that most chemistry manuals group it with the alkaline-earth metals, because it is believed that simple minds will easier remember simplified classifications, even if they are only approximately true, while cesium is extremely rare and, due to that, it remains rare in sea water too) For any of these 8 metals, it can be profitable to extract them from sea water, where they exist in huge quantities. For the other metals, which are present only in tiny quantities in sea water, it is likely that the great amount of energy needed to separate them from sea water makes their extraction not worthwhile.
    - Joker_vD 3y ago
      There is also e.g. uranium in the ocean, Japanese even attempted to extract it; and it worked but was like, 10 times costlier than just buying the uranium mined normally? So yeah, there is pretty much everything in the ocean, there is usually just no economical sense to try and extract stuff from it.
      - scythe 3y ago
        Uranium is more concentrated in the ocean than other transition metals because it forms a stable anion (UO4(2-), IIRC). The most abundant transition metal in the ocean is actually molybdenum, followed by vanadium; most TMs have negligible solubility. But lithium with its high solubility is much more abundant in the ocean than any transition metal. Bromine is even more abundant than lithium in the ocean, but we don't extract it from the ocean; most of the world's bromine comes from the Dead Sea, and despite the location the supplies of Br is considered secure and the price is low. Processing large quantities of seawater is annoying, even though the energy cost in principle is attainable.
- s0rce 3y ago
  Minerals in the ocean come from rocks either from runoff eroding rocks or from undersea vents https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/whysalty.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/whysalty.html Since there is no outflow for these minerals the ocean has become salty over time.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  It's just another salt I suppose, anything soluble ends up getting washed in there. The question is, "why is the water on land not salty?" answer: it all got washed into the sea. The water keeps going in a cycle, evaporating and raining, but the salt stays in the sea.
- olddustytrail 3y ago
  Also, see where Lithium is in the periodic table. Right above Sodium. So you expect it to form salts just like Sodium and the sea is famously salty!

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

Lithium is not rare, it's not going to lead to the development of new Saudi Arabias, and the lithium in batteries can be indefinitely recycled. I wish people would stop trying to paint the energy future along these lines. It's a fossil fuel rip-it-and-ship-it mindset from the past bolted onto the future and it's often propagated by people who an $$ interest in keeping things the way things are, or are trying to pump some new temporary get-rich-scheme ("harvest lithium from abandoned oil wells!" "buy these penny lithium stocks" etc)

Detrytus 3y ago
Lithium, as an element is not rare, but the deposits that are economically viable to mine are. I keep hearing about extracting lithium from seawater, but no one so far have come up with viable technology. Funny thing is: laws like EU's one that demands all new cars be electric by 2035 will lead to lithium shortages, which means Lithium batteries will become much more expensive in the next few decades.