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The 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 cle
by SeanAnderson 3y ago
The 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?
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- 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
- Jensson 3y agoBut that is lakes, not seas. Lakes are extremely small compared to the seas so doesn't hold that much lithium so you can't really scale that up. To get the amount you talked about we would need to start pumping water from the depths of the seas, since most of it is there.
- whamlastxmas 3y agoThe red sea alone, which is what they're using, is about 0.1% of the world's water, which is 230 million tons of lithium, which is ten times the reserves we have from land. There's plenty.