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We’re Going to Need More Lithium

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Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#91

Post by sgift »

monort wrote: post #68
thecabinet wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming lithium reserves work anything like oil reserves, the quantity of reserves depends on market process. When oil sells for $20/bb, oil that costs more than that to extract doesn't count towards the reserves. As the price goes up, the reserves increase, because you can extract oil from more challenging circumstances. This is why we've had 20-30 years of oil reserves for the last 50 years.

Oil alarmism existed as early as 1919: http://papers.sae.org/190011/

So, it took almost 100 years until the mainstream understood what should have been blatantly obvious to anyone who thinks about it: Oh right. Oil is limited.

I mean, sure, if we search long and hard enough we will probably almost always be able to find/produce something, but I don't think asking 1 million per liter of gas would be such a great idea.

Hoping that there will always be a scientific breakthrough just "right in time" to solve our resource problems is great. I love optimism. It's also extremely irresponsible to depend on it.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#92

Post by Robotbeat »

snowmaker wrote: post #13
nsnick wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Relevant article from 11 days ago on sodium battery development: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15938642

Sodium is not fundamentally better material than lithium, though. It's just a bit more abundant (but lithium is very abundant and can be extracted from actual ocean water, though because of lithium's abundance, that will never be the cheapest way to get lithium).

Lithium is the third lightest element and the lightest (regular) metal. Sodium is much heavier.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#93

Post by coldtea »

monort wrote: post #68
thecabinet wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming lithium reserves work anything like oil reserves, the quantity of reserves depends on market process. When oil sells for $20/bb, oil that costs more than that to extract doesn't count towards the reserves. As the price goes up, the reserves increase, because you can extract oil from more challenging circumstances. This is why we've had 20-30 years of oil reserves for the last 50 years.

Oil alarmism existed as early as 1919: http://papers.sae.org/190011/

You mean "oil cautionism" based on the very well established fact that reserves are limited (and it took the billions of years to be created)?

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#95

Post by Robotbeat »

dharma1 wrote: post #89
lucaspiller wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes. Tesla's standardization on one or two cell types allows them to build specialized machines that can efficiently and quickly disassemble and recycle the components of the cell. (EDIT: That's the idea Musk presented, at least. I do know Tesla has done some battery recycling, but I don't know if they've implemented this method at scale, yet.)

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#96

Post by coldtea »

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.

You know, that's not inevitable, it's more of a religious viewpoint. There's no contract humanity signed to guarantee timely delivery of scientific breakthroughs.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#97

Post by Robotbeat »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #50
nickthemagicman wrote: post #3

Sounds like these companies are good investment opportunities? No?

Well, ALB had multiple gains and is in a low now. Perhaps by the news of the Sodium "alternative"

Sodium will always be heavier for the same energy. It's fundamental physics.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#98

Post by coldtea »

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?

The limited nature of the resource, so that whether the demand, "production" cannot increase ad infinitum.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#99

Post by Robotbeat »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
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…

Lithium can be extracted from the ocean at commercially viable costs, no asteroid mining required.

Correct! However, since lithium is abundant, there are so many other cheaper sources of lithium (for instance, geothermal brines) that ocean extraction will never be the cheapest source (although it is sufficiently cheap if it were the only option).

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#100

Post by Robotbeat »

MrBorough wrote: post #36

This 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…

Pretty sure that if you want a mineral cheap, you'll want there to be peace, not war. Extracting something in the middle of a war zone is super expensive.

If anyone is intentionally fomenting war because of cobalt or oil or whatever, it's because they want that mineral or commodity to be expensive, not cheap.

That would help explain oil interests wanting to foment war in the Middle East. The idea is to /prevent/ the Middle East from cheaply extracting oil, thus increasing the price of oil.

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