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Looks like existing worldwide reserves are 26M tons [0], so this is a big find. [0] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-lithium.pdf https://pubs.
by maliker 3y ago
Looks like existing worldwide reserves are 26M tons [0], so this is a big find.
[0] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-lithium.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-lithium.pd...
- SeanAnderson 3y agoThe second sentence of the article states, "The find means Thailand has the third largest lithium resources, behind Bolivia and Argentina, but it is not yet clear how much can be exploited commercially." If Thailand has 14M and there are two others with >14M then total known resources must be at least 42M tons, no?
- DougBTX 3y agoReserves and resources are different measures, same doc says 98M resources.
- marcosdumay 3y agoReserves are only defined when you also state a price. It's not a free number. Those people are probably using different prices, and not communicating them.
- whimsicalism 3y agoWhat? These are denominated in tons, not dollars.
- Vecr 3y agoTons economically extractable at that price.
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agoThe point is that reserves are only economically viable at a given price. At $0 there are 0 reserves because no one is willing to give you lithium. At $1 mil per kg, there is basically infinite reverses because you can do things like dig up the entire earth's crust and filter all the lithium out of it.
- solardev 3y ago> At $1 mil per kg, there is basically infinite reverses because you can do things like dig up the entire earth's crust and filter all the lithium out of it. YC Summer 24?
- solardev 3y agoFollowed by YC Summer 25: Still out of work and homeless? ReEarth helps people find freshly-tilled soil with no toxic heavy metals! Become a part of the New Earth homesteading revolution, grow your own greens and save what's left of the planet!
- whimsicalism 3y agogotcha - thanks!
- whamlastxmas 3y agoIt's even more relevant because it doesn't have to get that crazy, there's 230 BILLION tons in sea water, and it's not a crazy impossible processes to extract lithium from it given some more advances in the process
- Jensson 3y ago230 billion tons in sea water isn't even a single PPM, doesn't seem feasible to me.
- whamlastxmas 3y agoThey're already building a pilot facility to do so: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/kaust-spinout-will-extract-lithium-from-seawater/ https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/kaust-spinout-wil... Lithium can be a lot more prevalent in some waters, they are already competitive commercial mining operations from briny lake beds. Utah's Salt Lake for example is 21ppm and is mined at $2/kg
- 3y ago
- hnbear 3y agoThat link says 98M tonnes towards the end, unless I’m misreading
- nilsherzig 3y agoI think it's 89M t resources (under the ground?) and the other number is what they already mined
- scythe 3y agoRight, Thailand hasn't just opened 14Mt reserves, rather resources. A reserve is a resource that you're prepared to exploit. But see also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39059076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39059076
- Night_Thastus 3y agoI think that true global reserves are much higher than what we know now. Before, Lithium was important, but not nearly in the quantities needed for EV's. Now that EV's have picked up, more people will be looking for Lithium, and that will make all the difference.
- nordsieck 3y ago> I think that true global reserves are much higher than what we know now. That was certainly true of oil. As reserves got depleted, progressively more advanced techniques allowed people to extract from more difficult locations.
- stouset 3y agoAt ever-increasing costs.
- baq 3y agoAnd decreasing EROI. Maybe you meant that, but it’s worth stating outright, as no amount of money can fix that.
- stouset 3y agoYep, that’s frankly a much bigger deal and something I should have specifically noted.
- kortilla 3y agoIt’s not really a big deal because we have renewables that can fund the extraction. Oil isn’t useful for its contribution to global energy, it’s useful because it’s portable.
- stouset 3y agoRenewables used for extracting oil are renewables that can’t be used for other uses, and this shortfall will need to be made up for by… burning fossil fuels.
- topspin 3y ago> so this is a big find Plus it's far away from the environment, so recovery will be uncomplicated.
- Hackbraten 3y agoI see what you did there. [0] [0]: https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM
- smcin 3y ago@ 1m30s Classic Clarke & Dawe
- mindcrime 3y ago> Plus it's far away from the environment So it's in another environment?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- onthecanposting 3y agoLet's hope this isn't another BRE-X. The press release seems to imply these are inferred or probable reserves. Great news if it's true.
- mrinterweb 3y agoThere was a very large (20-40M tons) deposit recently discovered on the border of Oregon and Nevada. https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2023/09/22/report-of-giant-lithium-find-underscores-need-for-less-sloppy-permitting-conservationist-says/ https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2023/09/22/report-of-giant-lit...
- Tagbert 3y agothat one is near the surface and consists of clay deposits so extraction and refining should be much easier than many other deposits, such as in Australia.
- genman 3y agoThe confusion comes from wrong vocabulary. There are two different words in use: resources and reserves. Resources is what ever there is in (or in some cases on) the ground. Reserves is what can be viably extracted. World lithium resources are close to 100M tons, but usable part, reserves, is about 1/4 of it. Notice how it is also stated in the article: “We are trying to find out how much can we use from the resources we found. It takes time,” Rudklao told The Nation. So they don't know how big are the reserves.
- nextaccountic 3y agoWhy only 100M? Shouldn't Lithium be absurdly abundant, given it's a lightweight element?
- genman 3y agoThe around 100M tons is what we know to exits and we know where it exits. As you can see, more is getting located as we move on.
- tim333 3y agoReserves are very different from resources though. In mining jargon the resource is how much you think is out there, a reserve is ore that you drilled, analysed, mapped out and shown to be profitable extractable, so a lot less. Because turning resources into reserves is expensive only a limited amount is done before it is mined.
- Tuna-Fish 3y agoNot quite. Resource is how much you can show is there, reserve is how much can be extracted at a given cost. "What you think is out there" differs from resource in that a honest answer to the former would need to involve doing a lot of statistics on the 99+% of "empty space" of earth's crust that could potentially be exploited but that has not been explored, based on the data points you have of the areas that you have explored. While resource refers to specific deposits that someone has done work on to show they exist, not the best estimate of how much material is there to be mined. Sorry for being nitpicky, but people on the internet constantly get this wrong. No-one maintains a number for "how much lithium (or oil, or any other material) we believe there remains to be mined", and every number that occasionally gets misused to represent that is off by multiple orders of magnitude.
- cmcaleer 3y agoImportant line from the article: "...but it is not yet clear how much can be exploited commercially". This likely doesn't mean a straightforward +15M tons to the world's supply.