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We’re Going to Need More Lithium

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Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#111

Post by [deleted] »

thomasahle wrote: post #104
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.

1 percent for a dozen years, that's 120 years left. That's more than double of oil: https://www.seeker.com/how-much-oil-is-left-on-earth-1792718...

[deleted]

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#112

Post by tomxor »

thomasahle wrote: post #104
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.

1 percent for a dozen years, that's 120 years left. That's more than double of oil: https://www.seeker.com/how-much-oil-is-left-on-earth-1792718...

Do you really think the consumption rate is linear?

...I didn't realise we were already at full EV adoption.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#113

Post by srtjstjsj »

valuearb wrote: post #105
coldtea wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No, there is a thing called the market price which does that for us. When oil reaches $300 per barrel, demand will drop substantially. When it reaches $1,000 a barrel, demand will be drop to only a tiny fraction. As prices rise, complements get more attractive. Other sources of energy, from solar, wind, to nuclear become far more attractive. And that’s without inventing new complements. Which will happen, and likely…

We can't simply buy new inventions.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#114

Post by srtjstjsj »

cpursley wrote: post #85
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 th…

on the other hand, population does not simply add up, it multiplies. _Reason_ magazine ignores the existence of famine and war and pollution. Abundance is not a law of nature.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#115

Post by castle-bravo »

Can anyone comment on the feasibility/state of the art for extracting lithium from seawater?

I've found an article [0] which describes a specially made membrane which allows lithium ions to pass, but nothing larger. If it's really possible to scale this up cheaply, the supply of lithium will be constrained by the supply of power, not scarce mineral deposits.

[0] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011916414...

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#116

Post by srtjstjsj »

Robotbeat wrote: post #100
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…

If you don't control the resource, you get no profit from it, so you foment war to gain control of it.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#117

Post by srtjstjsj »

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…

It's irresponsible to say that you want something to become absolutely more expensive just so some other amusing method of production becomes comparatively less expensive. The idea behind solving problems is to make life better, not make live hard so it can be made almost as good as before.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#118

Post by monkeypizza »

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.

Numbers like 0.5% or 0.01% qualify as "Less than 1%", so this thread is invalid.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#119

Post by valuearb »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #113
valuearb wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there is a thing called the market price which does that for us. When oil reaches $300 per barrel, demand will drop substantially. When it reaches $1,000 a barrel, demand will be drop to only a tiny fraction. As prices rise, complements get more attractive. Other sources of energy, from solar, wind, to nuclear become far more attractive. And that’s without inventing new complements. Which will happen, and likely…

We can't simply buy new inventions.

We don’t have to, we already have complements to replace any natural resources we run low on. Inventing better ones just makes the transitions easier.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#120

Post by QAPereo »

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.

At what environmental cost? How many gallons/sec are you processing, how much energy is used per gram of Li? Without burning fissile fuels or building expensive new nuke plants, how will it work?
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