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How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

bbc.com

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Re: How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

#91

Post by olivermarks »

rootusrootus wrote: post #60
olivermarks wrote: post #5

Rare earth mineral and lithium extraction is going to be the greatest disaster the world has ever seen because ocean floors will be plundered - the damage to the planet whether at sea or on land will be unprecedented. It is surreal how naive people are about both this plus the huge lithium batteries high temperature fire risks and associated high voltage electrocution. There is a reason we went from high pressure ste…

> There is a reason we went from high pressure steam power to a lower pressure oil and gas based economy after the Victorian era. First, steam is not a fuel. Second, where did you get the idea that steam pressure is higher than what we see with oil and gas fueled machines?

Steam energy was what powered the industrial revolution, and is now a major enabler of the production of electricity.

https://petrotechinc.com/how-does-a-steam-turbine-work/

Unfortunately we are burning huge amounts of wood to produce electricity in this way. I prefer small modular nuclear reactors if we want to be environmentally efficient. https://www.wbdg.org/resources/biomass-electricity-generatio....

Re: How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

#92

Post by olivermarks »

rootusrootus wrote: post #64
olivermarks wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars used to be made of steel and were very recyclable. More recently they are mostly made of plastics and alloys that are not easily recyclable. Lithium is extremely hard to recycle.

> Cars used to be made of steel and were very recyclable. More recently they are mostly made of plastics and alloys that are not easily recyclable. 50/50, actually.

There is still some steel in the core load bearing areas of modern vehicle but they are predominantly alloys. I'd say around 60% alloys, 35% plastics and 5% steel would be an average

Re: How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

#93

Post by strbean »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #35
Workaccount2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Localised environmental destruction is such a pittance compared to global environmental catastrophe that its comical people even bring it up.

>Localised environmental destruction is such a pittance compared to global environmental catastrophe that its comical people even bring it up. While every environmentalist ever talks about "the greater good" they pouted and whined and tossed the plate on the floor when there was nuclear energy on it. You'll have to forgive the general public for not taking you (as a group) at your word.

I think the issue with nuclear energy is the combined threats of local destruction and global environmental catastrophe. They may be overblown, but mining lithium to make electric cars doesn't increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, for example.

Re: How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

#94

Post by robocat »

acchow wrote: post #85
samatman wrote: post #11

I wish Australia the best of luck in escaping the resource curse, by moving up the value chain. Relative to China. I'd like this post to be more sarcastic than it is, really, I would.

> resource curse The service sector makes up 62% of the Australian economy.

Australia’s service sector makes up ~20% of exports - the resource curse is related to import/export, not internal measures.

Total exports 2019-20: 383G$ goods, 92.3G$ services https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/trade-and-investment/tr...

Re: How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

#95

Post by olivermarks »

someweirdperson wrote: post #88
olivermarks wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20210113.as... Risks to Emergency Responders from High-Voltage, Lithium-Ion Battery Fires Addressed in Safety Report Actions sought by the NTSB in the four safety recommendations issued Wednesday include: Factoring the availability of a manufacturer’s emergency response guide, and its adherence to International Organization for Standardization standard 17840 and SAE In…

SAE is using terms differently, abusing, re-defining terms that have been in use for a century. This mixed use of the same word for different things can be extremely dangerous.

Not as dangerous as the free pass LFP batteries have been getting despite trapped energy, thermal runaway and very high heat fires that are extremely hard to control and extinguish. There needs to be far, far more oversight of the battery industry.

Re: How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

#96

Post by acchow »

robocat wrote: post #94
acchow wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> resource curse The service sector makes up 62% of the Australian economy.

Australia’s service sector makes up ~20% of exports - the resource curse is related to import/export, not internal measures. Total exports 2019-20: 383G$ goods, 92.3G$ services https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/trade-and-investment/tr...

Wikipedia has an articel on the Resource Curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

It is about having "less economic growth, less democracy, or worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources". Australia is an advanced services based economy. No one would consider them as an example of a country under a "resource curse"

By your measure, Japan also has a resource curse because services makes up 22% of exports?

Re: How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

#98

Post by doorman2 »

asdff wrote: post #71
doorman2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like they're giving the lithium away for free?

After you account for the environmental costs, they are probably paying people to remove it from their country

Isn't that true of almost everything humans do? When I get a tank of gas, I'm basically paying to have a bigger problem in the future. I do so because it solves a problem I have in the present.

Re: How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

#99

Post by advisedwang »

asdff wrote: post #80
advisedwang wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lithium car batteries can be cycled 1500-2000 times. Fossil fuels get 1 cycle. 3 orders of magnitude is a categorical difference. [1] https://www.midtronics.com/blog/do-electric-car-ev-batteries...

Thats just because we don't care about reusing spent carbon. If we wanted to sequester all carbon into trees that we use again for fuel, for example, you can cycle atoms of carbon infinitely, and therefore power your vehicle purely from the sunlight energy that structures the chemistry of your woody carbon fuel without needing to build and replace solar panels every few decades.

There are quite a few technologies that attempt to use chemical energy storage, but none of them are as well developed as electricity/batteries:

- The hydrogen economy. Currently hydrogen generation is very expensive and there's no distribution system yet because of H2's physical properties.

- Biodiesel. Looks promising, but basically limited by inputs.

- Fuel cells can potentially be run reversibly, so you could have the same chemical medium being converted back-and-forth with a charger instead of lithium. I'm not very familiar, but I understand physical and chemical constraints mean this mode is difficult to manufacture and operate in practice.

Re: How Australia became the world’s greatest lithium supplier

#100

Post by varispeed »

dalyons wrote: post #42
varispeed wrote: post #34

Why lithium is not considered in the same category as fossil fuels? I mean, it is technically used as a fuel that you need to keep "energising" and it becomes "spent" after nth "energising'. Whereas e.g. diesel comes "pre-charged" and is "spent" after first use? I read conflicting articles which one is more environment friendly.

Because it doesn’t become “spent”, you can just recycle it back into new batteries at nearly 100% recovery.

How the process of recycling looks like in terms of energy needed to perform it, use of chemicals like solvents in the process - can these be recovered too?

I see I am being downvoted. It's like walking on eggshells asking these questions these days.

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