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Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

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Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#41

Post by Waterluvian »

wolverine876 wrote: post #28
Waterluvian wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like with chickens, the Jayhawk should just learn to fuse hydrogen down to lithium. I think the analogy doesn’t quite work. Humans produce chickens because we can do that. We find more lithium because we need it. Jayhawks can also evolve to get better at finding more chickens. And by their very nature, have been doing exactly that.

Evolution is a bit slow. How many millenia will it take the Jayhawks to figure it out? Humans can increase chicken production this year or maybe next.

For sure. That’s what makes us exceptional.

What I’m mainly pointing to is that we can’t currently just mass produce lithium. We just go around looking for it more.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#42

Post by danans »

vlovich123 wrote: post #35
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deposits appear sufficiently distributed to not cause geopolitical conflicts [1]. This is not oil. Lithium is relatively abundant, and a mineral to be reused, not energy to be consumed once through. To keep it conflict free, we must continue to discover reserves and drive down the value of the commodity. No one goes to war over say, salt, in the 21st century (at least not yet!). [1] https://lithiumfuture.org/map.html

Can you clarify about reuse? At least as far as batteries go, right now once it's in a battery it gets used up & then ends up in the trash [2]. There's no efficient / cost-effective way to extract lithium from spent batteries for reuse in new batteries. We might in the future but it would require some scientific advances + expensive commercialization to scale up. Even if in the future we do develop a mechanism, it co…

> There's no efficient / cost-effective way to extract lithium from spent batteries for reuse in new batteries. We might in the future but it would require some scientific advances + expensive commercialization to scale up.

It's already 95% efficient.

No fundamental scientific advances are needed.

It's already being scaled commercially.

One example:

https://li-cycle.com/

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#43

Post by dark_star »

vlovich123 wrote: post #35
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deposits appear sufficiently distributed to not cause geopolitical conflicts [1]. This is not oil. Lithium is relatively abundant, and a mineral to be reused, not energy to be consumed once through. To keep it conflict free, we must continue to discover reserves and drive down the value of the commodity. No one goes to war over say, salt, in the 21st century (at least not yet!). [1] https://lithiumfuture.org/map.html

Can you clarify about reuse? At least as far as batteries go, right now once it's in a battery it gets used up & then ends up in the trash [2]. There's no efficient / cost-effective way to extract lithium from spent batteries for reuse in new batteries. We might in the future but it would require some scientific advances + expensive commercialization to scale up. Even if in the future we do develop a mechanism, it co…

Check out Jeffrey "JB" Straubel's new company, Redwood Materials[1][2]. They recycle lithium-ion batteries. He was Tesla's former chief technology officer.

They are essentially a lithium mine that's using a very high quality ore, ground-up batteries.

There are other companies doing this as well. [3]

1. https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/

2. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/battery-recycling-redwood-mater...

3. https://li-cycle.com/technology/

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#45

Post by laweijfmvo »

I'm assuming it's not a giant 15M ton chunk of (highly reactive) metal in the ground, but rather they took a bucket of dirt, analyzed it, and extrapolated how much lithium is available in the ground. My question is, how much "earth" do they need to dig up and refine to extract this amount of lithium?

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#46

Post by Night_Thastus »

maliker wrote: post #17

Looks like existing worldwide reserves are 26M tons [0], so this is a big find. [0] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-lithium.pd...

I think that true global reserves are much higher than what we know now.

Before, Lithium was important, but not nearly in the quantities needed for EV's. Now that EV's have picked up, more people will be looking for Lithium, and that will make all the difference.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#47

Post by bregma »

Throw84949 wrote: post #11

Lithium is quite common. Problem is minign it without totally destroying local environment!

Lithium is quite common in the ground. Mines are a dime a dozen all over the world. Mining it is the easy part. All processing is done by a handful of plants in China. It needs to be shipped to China, and the products need to be shipped from China to wherever they're used. Mining it is hard on the environment, yes, but it's just a drop in the bucket compared with the part no one talks about.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#48

Post by jldugger »

Rodmine wrote: post #7
kyawzazaw wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from Myanmar, this piques my interest

It's the new oil, so I would be careful. Democracy and camaraderie and all those greater good things tend to come where the cheap resources are.

Well, it's not like Mynamar's democracy is particularly functional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Myanmar_coup_d%27état

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#49

Post by setgree »

Waterluvian wrote: post #41
wolverine876 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution is a bit slow. How many millenia will it take the Jayhawks to figure it out? Humans can increase chicken production this year or maybe next.

For sure. That’s what makes us exceptional. What I’m mainly pointing to is that we can’t currently just mass produce lithium. We just go around looking for it more.

https://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/julian-si...

> when a particular resource becomes scarcer, its price increases, and that change incentivizes people to discover more of the resource, ration it, recycle it, or develop a substitute for it. As such, population growth and resource use do not automatically lead to higher commodity prices in the long run.

So no, we can't mass produce lithium, but a high enough price might drive someone to discover a substitute.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#50

Post by kingkongjaffa »

drak0n1c wrote: post #14
latchkey wrote: post #3

If Thailand has it, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia probably do too. Edit: After checking on a map, probably Myanmar/Malaysia.

Myanmar has the most bountiful gem mines in the world. I visited in 2019 and there were many shops with piles of ruby, jade, sapphire, even amber. They're already pretty specialized in mining and have little qualms about razing mining areas so would be able to take quick advantage - if their civil conflict allows.

> Myanmar has the most bountiful gem mines in the world.

I assume that's hyperbole because I couldn't find a list of top producing countries that included Myanmar, do you have a link?

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