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Wastewater from shale gas wells . Title is a little misleading.
Also, I would think that the fact that it just comes from shale gas well wastewater means it would be more commercially viable to actually extract.
Wastewater from shale gas wells . Title is a little misleading.
I agree the title is misleading, but in both directions. The 40% number is just for Marcellus shale gas wells - that is, basically shale from primarily a single state (Pennsylvania). Also, I would think that the fact that it just comes from shale gas well wastewater means it would be more commercially viable to actually extract.
It comes in several forms. Brines and mineral deposits. Brines are a form of very salty water that form when most of the water evaporates. Chile conveniently has some salt planes where that has happened naturally. The dead sea is very rich in lithium too. The salt lakes in Utah have plenty of lithium. And apparently Cornwall has some underground brines that have high concentrations of lithium. And actually our oceans are full of lithium too; albeit in lowish concentrations. The reason it's in water everywhere is because it leaches out from the earth crust. Those Cornish brines are the result of underground water being heated up geothermally and extracting lithium from granite.
Extracting lithium from brines or sea water can be done through evaporation or through filtering. There are some companies experimenting with filtering using nano technology. The advantage is that it is less energy intensive and you need way less clean water. And you can extract all sorts of stuff from these brines as they contain more than just lithium.
Mineral deposits in clays and rocks are also fairly common. There are viable lithium mines in many countries. Most of these are not being exploited because demand for lithium wasn't that high until only a few years ago. Also, it used to be a relatively worthless waste material that you'd have to separate from copper in copper mining and that would then get dumped. It's only fairly recently that lithium became valuable enough to bother to extract it.
And of course there's a rapidly growing third source of lithium that's very convenient to extract because it occurs in super high concentrations: all the products we make that have lithium in them. Like batteries. The lithium isn't actually consumed or lost when these products reach their end of life. Lithium recycling is becoming a big industry. Right now the demand for lithium is still growing rapidly so only a fraction of the demand can be met through recycling. But in a few decades that should taper off. At that point most of our lithium needs could come from recycling.
There's no shortage of lithium and there never will be. There are temporary dynamics where bringing new lithium production online simply takes time and money which is why prices were high a few years ago and are trending down lately. Actually, Bloomberg NEF recently published a report where they note that it seems we are heading for significant over production of lithium batteries. So, they are predicting price jobs and cancellations for a lot of the already committed investments on that front. https://about.bnef.com/blog/china-already-makes-as-many-batt...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least in the US, 40% of wastewater solids are already used for agriculture [1]. Another 10% is used for landscaping. The same site estimates that if all US biosolids were applied to agriculture, they would supply 3.2% of applied phosphorus. [1] https://www.biosolidsdata.org
How much processing do wastewater solids require to make them safe for agriculture? It is an expensive process?
The primary concern with waste solids would be the presence of heavy metals, I think, but those shouldn't be getting into the waste water stream anyway. Heavy metals are a concern anyway in phosphate fertilizer; many deposits of phosphorites have troublesome amounts of cadmium.
Lithium is everywhere, mostly in lowish concentrations but there's a lot of it. Way more than we'll ever need. The trick is extracting it economically. It comes in several forms. Brines and mineral deposits. Brines are a form of very salty water that form when most of the water evaporates. Chile conveniently has some salt planes where that has happened naturally. The dead sea is very rich in lithium too. The salt lak…
Lithium is everywhere, mostly in lowish concentrations but there's a lot of it. Way more than we'll ever need. The trick is extracting it economically. It comes in several forms. Brines and mineral deposits. Brines are a form of very salty water that form when most of the water evaporates. Chile conveniently has some salt planes where that has happened naturally. The dead sea is very rich in lithium too. The salt lak…
There's something utterly fascinating about watching a long talked about technology suddenly hit the liftoff point and explode into the markets.
Every few months they announce a new lithium mine. I don’t think this matters at all.
Shares in Core Lithium have crashed by more than 20 per cent this morning after the company announced it was reviewing its operations near Darwin because of "the deterioration in lithium market conditions".
I assumed they meant from high use of antidepressants…
I thought the exact same thing and was immediately skeptical. Glad I was wrong.
So assuming everyone on earth was fully dosed up, and you could collect all the waste, it's actually a lot!
The actual figure of 2 million people in the US on lithium carbonate, probably on smaller doses, is much less interesting: under 2000kg of pills, "only" a few hundred kilos of pure lithium per day. Though I think still interesting scale illustration that one pill each for 0.5% of people in the country weighs about the same as a car.