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We’re Going to Need More Lithium

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Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#81

Post by kogepathic »

saguro wrote: post #63
jwblackwell wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re assuming OP wants to invest all of his money in Lithuum. And that past performance remains the same

He's also assuming that ETF is going to perform the same way in the future, when the whole point of TFA is that lithium demand is about to surge.

There was another quote in TFA about the potential to over build mining capacity and flood the market.

But sure, buy this and hope it "surges" more than the general market. Given that billions of devices already have lithium cells in them and the historical performance of the Lithium ETF is still quite disappointing compared to the broader market, I wouldn't hold my breath that this time is any different.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#82

Post by neolefty »

disnsj wrote: post #70
keymone wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is any lithium actually lost in the lifecycle of battery? It’s not like oil that we burn and it’s gone.

True but it depends how expensive it is to recycle, a question o haven’t seen a clear answer to. I mean, technically, oil can be recycled too! Just cut some trees (I.e. sequester CO2) and make syngas.

Lithium ore is often < 1%. I'm no miner, but I'd bet an old battery beats that!

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#83

Post by yoz-y »

sametmax wrote: post #52
jeffdavis wrote: post #25

This seems like a simple case of "demand increases, price increases in the short term, production increases, things balance out" -- a textbook example of how a market is supposed to work. Did I miss something?

Yes. You missed that it's an ad disguised as an article. Maybe someone need people to invest in lithium, or to make lithium based companies look good, or to divert attention to lithium from other things... All in all, someone from an entity with a lot of money involved sent a PR guy with a story to tell to journalists. And the journalists were happy to write it down because it's interesting enough, serious enough, an…

Are there any articles that aren’t ads then? This one very well could be one but is the default assumption that an article is an ad now?

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#84

Post by tonyedgecombe »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #55
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It clearly worked as there are several questions here about where to invest, we are easily manipulated aren't we.

I invested a year ago and it is a interesting resource. As all car companies need Lithium. Renewable energy is also in the same ballpark

I'm not doubting that, it may well be a good investment, it's just reacting to an advert isn't a good methodology for picking your investments.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#85

Post by cpursley »

robbrown451 wrote: post #6

How 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.

> can increasing scientific knowledge and technological innovation overcome any limitations to economic growth posed by the depletion of non-renewable resources?

> Stanford University economist Paul Romer has observed, "Every generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. The difficulty is the same one we have with compounding: possibilities do not merely add up; they multiply.”

http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/27/peak-everything

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#86

Post by oreo81 »

mtgx wrote: post #80
tomxor wrote: post #61

> The next dozen years will drain less than 1 percent of the reserves in the ground That's actually an extremely large portion for such a short length of time (this is the entire planet we are talking about). That projection doesn't paint a very sustainable future compared to oil (yes I hate oil), I hope it's efficiently recycled or replaced with better tech.

Unlike oil, lithium can be recycled in extremely high percentage. By the time this will be a problem in 100 years, we'll have long moved to something else, like graphene or whatever. I don't know why people are freaking out about it so much. My guess is it has to do something with oil propaganda. After all, the best myths are those that have a "seed of truth" in them. So once the oil industry started its anti-lithium…

>By the time this will be a problem in 100 years, we'll have long moved to something else, like graphene or whatever.

That is a big assumption, and honestly irresponsible.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#87

Post by [deleted] »

disnsj wrote: post #70
keymone wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is any lithium actually lost in the lifecycle of battery? It’s not like oil that we burn and it’s gone.

True but it depends how expensive it is to recycle, a question o haven’t seen a clear answer to. I mean, technically, oil can be recycled too! Just cut some trees (I.e. sequester CO2) and make syngas.

[deleted]

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#88

Post by disnsj »

neolefty wrote: post #82
disnsj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but it depends how expensive it is to recycle, a question o haven’t seen a clear answer to. I mean, technically, oil can be recycled too! Just cut some trees (I.e. sequester CO2) and make syngas.

Lithium ore is often < 1%. I'm no miner, but I'd bet an old battery beats that!

Concentration isn’t the whole story though. Plastic is 100% plastic, but it’s still hard and expensive to recycle.

Lithium batteries need to be removed from their device. Then removed from their casing. Both these steps are for things made tamper proof to some degree.

Add transportation, labor and environmental [1] costs.

In general recycling of mtls used in electronic devices is dirty and expensive.

Now a car with a big battery will change a lot of these numbers. But the problem remains: we look for tech solution (i.e. e-cars) to our social problems (bad cities, “weak” ppl [2])

[1] the Chinese are increasingly reluctant to import the worlds trash.

[2] as a kid my wife used newspaper for toilet paper at an outhouse, no one owned cars and her grandparents village was a three hour walk (no roads). That’s strong. My mom drove me to school. That’s weak

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#89

Post by dharma1 »

lucaspiller wrote: post #51
EGreg wrote: post #27

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?

Typically when a lithium-ion battery is recycled some metal parts are extracted (the battery contains metal plates which are relatively easily separated), but the lithium usually is not as it’s a lot more complicated to extract. Economically it is a lot cheaper just to mine new lithium, so proper recycling facilities don’t often exist. In the U.K. lithium-ion batteries are usually discarded in a landfill, and often t…

feels like such a waste.. would it be possible to design lithium-ion batteries in a way that's easier/cheaper to recycle?

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#90

Post by Manglano »

jmnicolas wrote: post #32
QAPereo wrote: post #2

It 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.

Cryogenic engines burn hydrogen from electrolysis and their fuel can be produced from renewable resources. All their atmospheric fuel is returned to the ocean by the water cycle, so little fuel is lost to the vacuum. Engine tuning limits greenhouse emissions. Magnetic projectiles can reach escape velocity with the right design.

Instead of one giant rocket, imagine swarms of small, reusable, low-emission projectiles whose payloads assemble into larger apparatuses in space.

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