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Dumb question: how do they measure/know it's "15M tonnes". Meaning, it's not like they just found one big 15M tonne solid bar of lithium.
by tiffanyh 3y ago
Dumb question: how do they measure/know it's "15M tonnes".
Meaning, it's not like they just found one big 15M tonne solid bar of lithium.
- great_psy 3y agoI think there’s different ways: - take random samples from the area and statistically come up with that value - put a radar/sonar/ xray etc in a hole and get an outline of how big the deposit is. I did not work in this field explicitly, but worked on Gaussian processes which were first used as a way to aggregate data like this from multiple sources to minimize the number of drillings required to find oil.
- rmm 3y agonot a dumb question, as seen by the fact that the media/government minister etc. have blown this story out of proportion. In reality its most likely 15M tonnes inferrred resource of 0.4% lithium content So much smaller amount of actual lithium. They work this out by doing core drilling, and then inferring/extrapolating the size/shape of the orebody boundaries. (Im a mining engineer)