This may be a silly question, but can't the lithium be recharged and reused? Or it's discarded and useless after a battery is tossed? Why mine more?
Because greater numbers of devices and batteries are required.
We’re Going to Need More Lithium
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Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium
#32It might cost more, but it’s certainly abundant; we’re not going to run out of it. No I would even go so far as to say that a rise in the price of terrestrial lithium would be a good thing. In the short term it will hurt, but there’s a lot of runway in that graph before we hit serious scarcity. As the price rises I could honestly see someone like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos finally astroid money off the ground. I don’t h…
I don't see how asteroid mining can be viable economically. You still need an enormous quantity of petrol to send things in space and judging by the rarefaction of said petrol its price is bound to increase a lot.
Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium
#33Sounds like these companies are good investment opportunities? No?
Doesn't the efficient market theory ensure that any outsized future returns are already reflected in the price?
Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't sending things back to earth relatively inexpensive? Wouldn't gravity do most of the work?
You need to first send equipment to do the mining and sending back - that part is very expensive, and if it's only to be used for sending stuff back to Earth (safely), then mining in space has very bad returns. Asteroid mining is absolutely awesome if you move as much of the process as possible to space - every kilogram you use up there to build something is a kilogram you didn't have to launch upwell.
What you'd really want to do is develop a working zero (natural) gravity solar-furnace process that works.
It'd probably involve some kind of centrifuge design... but I wouldn't rule out just making something screaming hot and then suddenly introducing kinetic energy.
Then there are two main options...
A) Make a crude re-entry shield out of the waste products + some of those other resources you're not keen on harvesting for the primary use of sending to earth, and you put a nice candy core in the middle. Aim the landing trajectory at some shallow ocean.
B) Taking things UP in to orbit is expensive. Taking them back down is probably less so, though our current vehicles aren't based on completing that task so they'd need to changed to handle cargo both ways.
Option C could also be fun... if we ever get space elevators working things could go a lot like in science fiction. (The orbital elevators and start of a planetary ring from Gundam 00 jumps to mind as a reference; 3001 also had the idea much earlier but in less detail)
Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium
#35How sure are we that some new tech won't replace lithium ion batteries? I'd want to know that if I was investing in a mine.
The reason lithium is used for batteries is that it is an excellent anode the lightest metal. Lithium will always be used for batteries that need to be light.
Battery based on aluminium theoretically can have much better capacity than lithium both per volume and per weight. But it is much harder to make batteries from it. Still there were a progress of making non-rechargeable fuel cells based on aluminium. As aluminium is safer to handle even compared with gasoline, loading/unloading few bars of it from a car should not be a problem.
Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium
#36This is why the imperialists countries like USA, Britain, France etc are going to foment war in countries like Congo where people live like animals and work for peanuts to dig out cobalt:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4764208/Child-miners...
Let's make a million dollars no matter who dies. It aggravates me that I don't see any comments here relating to what is happening in Congo and all the multinationals supported by the all good US/Britain/France etc. Why do you think the arena of war is being shifted to Africa? Are you ready to wake up? Or do you care about what is happening as long as you have a new toy/mobile to play?
Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium
#37Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium
#38This is why the imperialists countries like USA, Britain, France etc are going to foment war in countries like Congo where people live like animals and work for peanuts to dig out cobalt: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4764208/Child-miners... Let's make a million dollars no matter who dies. It aggravates me that I don't see any comments here relating to what is happening in Congo and all the multinationals s…
Do you have a more... reputable source than the daily mail?
Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium
#39If I wanted to invest in lithium, what companies or ETFs should I look at?
Global X Lithium ETF (NYSE:LIT) https://www.globalxfunds.com/funds/lit/
At 0.76% management fee and an average return over 5 years of 8.09%, you're better off just investing in an index ETF.
Their own comparison shows the index matching or beating the Lithium ETF in every metric.
* LIT since inception: 38.48%
* Index over same period: 45.82%
You also have zero diversification with a resource ETF. If you really want to buy into only Lithium then I won't try to talk you out of it.
But maybe consider Vanguard Growth ETF (VUG), the average return over 5 years is 14.4%, or nearly double that of LIT. [1]
[1] https://institutional.vanguard.com/iippdf/pdfs/FS967R.pdf