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We’re Going to Need More Lithium

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Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#131

Post by EGreg »

lucaspiller wrote: post #51
EGreg wrote: post #27

This may be a silly question, but can't the lithium be recharged and reused? Or it's discarded and useless after a battery is tossed? Why mine more?

Typically when a lithium-ion battery is recycled some metal parts are extracted (the battery contains metal plates which are relatively easily separated), but the lithium usually is not as it’s a lot more complicated to extract. Economically it is a lot cheaper just to mine new lithium, so proper recycling facilities don’t often exist. In the U.K. lithium-ion batteries are usually discarded in a landfill, and often t…

That's what I was getting at. The world is running out of fresh lithium and meanwhile this used lithium is polluting landfills. Crazy!!

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#132

Post by wetpaws »

oreo81 wrote: post #86
mtgx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike oil, lithium can be recycled in extremely high percentage. By the time this will be a problem in 100 years, we'll have long moved to something else, like graphene or whatever. I don't know why people are freaking out about it so much. My guess is it has to do something with oil propaganda. After all, the best myths are those that have a "seed of truth" in them. So once the oil industry started its anti-lithium…

>By the time this will be a problem in 100 years, we'll have long moved to something else, like graphene or whatever. That is a big assumption, and honestly irresponsible.

Why is it irresponsible? Stone age did not end because of the stone shortage.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#133

Post by oreo81 »

wetpaws wrote: post #132
oreo81 wrote: post #86

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. That is a big assumption, and honestly irresponsible.

Why is it irresponsible? Stone age did not end because of the stone shortage.

Because you're blindly assuming we'll have a break through in battery technology in the next 100 years. Shrugging off a shortage of lithium as a non issue because we'll just come up with something better is irresponsible.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#134

Post by scarlac »

amelius wrote: post #76
scarlac wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scale issue. Example: My 15" 2017 laptop has a A Nissan Leaf battery is on the smaller side of what many believe is required for a mass adoption EV, yet still around 300 times larger. A small Tesla Model 3 is around 50 kWh[1], over 600 times larger. A large one at 75 kWh[1], over 900 times. Here's an interesting infographic on Lithium-based batteries: https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/breakdown-raw-materials-tesla... Fo…

> For old EV batteries it will be viable to reclaim metals, but regular consumer electronics waste is not enough to meet EV production. So it's a temporary problem that will go away once old EV batteries are coming in?

I wouldn't use those words (temporary problem) since I think we should be better at recycling batteries already, but yes - once the amount increases, so does economic incentive to build recovery facilities. Tesla has said they plan to do it.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#135

Post by wetpaws »

oreo81 wrote: post #133
wetpaws wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it irresponsible? Stone age did not end because of the stone shortage.

Because you're blindly assuming we'll have a break through in battery technology in the next 100 years. Shrugging off a shortage of lithium as a non issue because we'll just come up with something better is irresponsible.

In the history of humanity was never a case when technological advancement was doomed by a lack of a resource. Aluminium was extremely limited and valuable and no one was givinf damn and for a good reason - it does barely cost anything due to the massive technological paradigm shift. In fact, if people think about it more then five seconds, then pretty much every particle on this planet is limited and can be a potential bottleneck. Breaking news, let's all just die to protect our previous mother Earth.

I don't care about doomsday scenarios, because I kept hearing them every day, if there is anything more irresponsible then it's blind alarmism.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#136

Post by monkeypizza »

tomxor wrote: post #124
monkeypizza wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

With a stat like "less than 1%" the order of magnitude is at least 1/10 of 1% otherwise it's an invalid format for a statistic, it's also most likely >= 0.5 because of rounding... 0 is also less than 1 so with your logic the statistic is meaningless.

Yes, all "X is less than Y" statistics are meaningless unless there the convention you mention is strongly held by journalists when they interpret studies - which is unlikely.

i.e. it'd be very easy for a study to say "we have shown that it's likely that the effect size is less than 1%" and then a journalist to interpret that as <1%, and then for a reader to incorrectly think "they wouldn't have said this if it were actually 0.1% or lower".

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