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Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

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Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#221

Post by rmm »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #45

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?

from what i can see the media/government minister have blown this out of proportion.

First off it looks like they identified 15M tonnes of lithium hosting rock (pegmatite) which has a grade of 0.4% of lithium in the form of spodumene (which then needs ot be processed to extract the lithium out of).

But in general, how it works is they drill a bunch of holes in the ground and analyse the cores. From that that interpolate the size/shape of the ore body and calculate an estimate of size.

The more holes they drill the greater the confidence.

There is a lot of 'art' to this science

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#222

Post by stouset »

baq wrote: post #85
stouset wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At ever-increasing costs.

And decreasing EROI. Maybe you meant that, but it’s worth stating outright, as no amount of money can fix that.

Yep, that’s frankly a much bigger deal and something I should have specifically noted.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#223

Post by chefandy »

rmm wrote: post #221
laweijfmvo wrote: post #45

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?

from what i can see the media/government minister have blown this out of proportion. First off it looks like they identified 15M tonnes of lithium hosting rock (pegmatite) which has a grade of 0.4% of lithium in the form of spodumene (which then needs ot be processed to extract the lithium out of). But in general, how it works is they drill a bunch of holes in the ground and analyse the cores. From that that interpol…

Roughly what how much volume would 15m tons of pegmatite take up? I have no intuitive sense of scale with these things.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#224

Post by kortilla »

stouset wrote: post #222
baq wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And decreasing EROI. Maybe you meant that, but it’s worth stating outright, as no amount of money can fix that.

Yep, that’s frankly a much bigger deal and something I should have specifically noted.

It’s not really a big deal because we have renewables that can fund the extraction. Oil isn’t useful for its contribution to global energy, it’s useful because it’s portable.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#225

Post by mindcrime »

topspin wrote: post #99
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...

> so this is a big find Plus it's far away from the environment, so recovery will be uncomplicated.

> Plus it's far away from the environment

So it's in another environment?

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#226

Post by Tuna-Fish »

legulere wrote: post #148
ajuc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you look at elements' abundance in Earth's crust lithium is about 50% more common than lead, but we mine 268 times more lead every year. We just weren't looking very hard to find lithium compared to lead till very recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...

Minerals can be common but infeasible for extraction. Aluminum is one of the most common elements but we extract it just from bauxite

We extract aluminum only from bauxite because it's slightly (think 5%) less expensive to refine it from bauxite than the next class of materials.

If all of world's bauxite reserves ran dry, we would move to the next best sources, and this would impact aluminum prices less than typical yearly variations in electricity costs near smelters.

Nearly all aluminum minerals are potential ores for aluminum, the only question is how much other, undesirable material (mostly silica) you need to remove. Bauxite is nice because nature did a lot of the early separation process steps (slightly acidic rains washed away silica over millennia).

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#227

Post by hatthew »

avar wrote: post #218
hatthew wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had hoped that my point was clear without too much elaboration, and that you were joining this discussion in good faith. My understanding: At the moment, climate projections are that within the next few centuries we will reach temperatures not seen since the eocene. The mammals of the eocene were quite small, because larger mammals had trouble surviving the hot climate. While the broad categories of animals that st…

You no longer believe that we're conversing in good faith? > At the moment, climate projections are that within the next few centuries we will reach temperatures not seen since the eocene. That seems about right, see e.g.: https://www.marum.de/en/Dr.-thomas-westerhold/CENOGRID.html > The mammals of the eocene were quite small, because larger mammals had trouble surviving the hot climate. What makes you think mammal s…

Based on the context of your first comment I thought you were trying to argue that the environment isn't really in trouble. If you agree that humans are negatively impacting the environment, that's good enough for me :)

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#228

Post by Tuna-Fish »

tim333 wrote: post #188
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...

Reserves are very different from resources though. In mining jargon the resource is how much you think is out there, a reserve is ore that you drilled, analysed, mapped out and shown to be profitable extractable, so a lot less. Because turning resources into reserves is expensive only a limited amount is done before it is mined.

Not quite. Resource is how much you can show is there, reserve is how much can be extracted at a given cost.

"What you think is out there" differs from resource in that a honest answer to the former would need to involve doing a lot of statistics on the 99+% of "empty space" of earth's crust that could potentially be exploited but that has not been explored, based on the data points you have of the areas that you have explored.

While resource refers to specific deposits that someone has done work on to show they exist, not the best estimate of how much material is there to be mined.

Sorry for being nitpicky, but people on the internet constantly get this wrong. No-one maintains a number for "how much lithium (or oil, or any other material) we believe there remains to be mined", and every number that occasionally gets misused to represent that is off by multiple orders of magnitude.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#230

Post by hinkley »

_heimdall wrote: post #175
epistasis wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear people complain about this, but they never place it in context with the damage from, say, iron or copper mining. I've done lots of web searches, read lots of articles, and there's never definitive measures of harm or comparisons to what current mining does. In a standard f150, how much damage is done from mining? How much damage comes from oil extraction compared to the one-time cost to extract lithium?

I got a but ranty there. To get back on topic, lithium isn't a one-time cost. Batteries wear out and have to be replaced. If we assume the batteries would outlive the average vehicle, we're committing to vehicles having an expected life of say 10 years. Meaning every 10 years it has to be destroyed, recycled, and replaced. I have a 1988 pickup that still runs great. I don't drive it regularly as my hybrid is much bet…

Depends on if we can separate the lithium like we do for lead acid batteries.

I wonder if there are any processes left to discover or if this is it.

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