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Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

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Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#131

Post by moffkalast »

rsanek wrote: post #82
AdamH12113 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US oil production did, in fact, peak in 1970 and declined for decades afterward. Production only started to increase again about 15 years ago with the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M... EDIT: To be clear, I am responding to a specific, narrow idea implied by the parent comment: that there was a prediction of peak oil in 1970, and that that predictio…

check out worldwide production. except for the 80s, it's been consistently increasing for at least 120 years. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-country...

Great news for climate change.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#132

Post by hinkley »

oblio wrote: post #59

Oil is the standard example. I forgot what the exact peak oil production years were supposed to be, but they went something like this: In 1880 peak oil was expected to be 1910. In 1910 it was 1940. In 1940 it became 1970. Etc. Basically we kept finding more and more as technology and practical prospecting experience advanced.

World peak oil production was expected to happen in the late 1980's, but what happened then was new subterranean imaging techniques to find oil, horizontal drilling to get at tricky oil, and new electrolytes (zeolytes) to refine crude, basically doubled the amount of petroleum we could possibly produce, and increasing the amount of crude we could get to if we wanted.

That said, even with process efficiency improvements like electrolytic cracking, the number of useful Calories we extract per Calorie of input has declined over time. More and more of the fossil fuels we produce are going into producing the next unit of fuel, which is a little harder to retrieve than the ones from last month.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#133

Post by jacobr1 »

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.

It is more than that. We also invent new technologies. Searching for resources, refining them, do the same stuff more cost-effectively, extraction from different kinds of compositions and ores with processing methodologies, recycling, changing other elements of a system to require different amounts or mixtures in a final product are all different ways to "increase yield." On the scale of decades, collectively, this is very responsive to demand and why arguments about "only so much of resource X exists" are usually highly misleading.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#134

Post by mbgerring »

cbg0 wrote: post #12
brianbreslin wrote: post #10

Does this mean other elements like cobalt are becoming the bigger bottleneck in battery production? The US found a large lithium reserve in Nevada not long ago; or to be clear a large reserve that they can now more affordably extract. As another commenter said its not that rare, just wasn't cheap to extract before.

LFP batteries don't use cobalt.

Or nickel!

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#135

Post by brianwawok »

ajuc wrote: post #91
Night_Thastus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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...

Lithium is a pretty volatile chemical though. Does the 50% more common take into account the fact that some lithium blows up?

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#136

Post by yieldcrv »

hinkley wrote: post #132
oblio wrote: post #59

Oil is the standard example. I forgot what the exact peak oil production years were supposed to be, but they went something like this: In 1880 peak oil was expected to be 1910. In 1910 it was 1940. In 1940 it became 1970. Etc. Basically we kept finding more and more as technology and practical prospecting experience advanced.

World peak oil production was expected to happen in the late 1980's, but what happened then was new subterranean imaging techniques to find oil, horizontal drilling to get at tricky oil, and new electrolytes (zeolytes) to refine crude, basically doubled the amount of petroleum we could possibly produce, and increasing the amount of crude we could get to if we wanted. That said, even with process efficiency improvemen…

yes but this happens in every commodity and serves to the earlier point

what happens is that because the price goes up and the margins potentially increase, more investment is tolerable for more expensive extraction methods

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#137

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

brianwawok wrote: post #135
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...

Lithium is a pretty volatile chemical though. Does the 50% more common take into account the fact that some lithium blows up?

Does the ore blow up often?

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#138

Post by ZoomerCretin »

markerz wrote: post #102
whimsicalism wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not really understand why we are obsessed with energy independence. It only matters if we were to ban exports which is an absurd thing to do.

Isn’t energy independence more about other countries exports? From the perspective of Germany, their reliance on Russian oil caused a high spike in cost of energy during the current Ukraine invasion. For the US, we don’t really want to be at the whim of OPEC. The 1973 Oil Crisis is a historical example of OPEC taking a religious and political stance and using their oil exports to coerce the US against Israel. Another…

Germany's plight is entirely owed to their own political malfeasance in shutting down their nuclear power plants. With them, they would have managed just fine without Russian oil and natural gas.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#139

Post by frabert »

brianwawok wrote: post #135
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...

Lithium is a pretty volatile chemical though. Does the 50% more common take into account the fact that some lithium blows up?

Is lithium normally mined in its elemental form? If not, its volatility as an ore might be wildly less than in its metallic form

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#140

Post by adonovan »

brianwawok wrote: post #135
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...

Lithium is a pretty volatile chemical though. Does the 50% more common take into account the fact that some lithium blows up?

That “blowing up” already happen billions of years ago. Lithium salts (ore) is what is left when lithium violently oxidizes.
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