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Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

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Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#281

Post by solardev »

solardev wrote: post #142
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that reserves are only economically viable at a given price. At $0 there are 0 reserves because no one is willing to give you lithium. At $1 mil per kg, there is basically infinite reverses because you can do things like dig up the entire earth's crust and filter all the lithium out of it.

> At $1 mil per kg, there is basically infinite reverses because you can do things like dig up the entire earth's crust and filter all the lithium out of it. YC Summer 24?

Followed by YC Summer 25: Still out of work and homeless? ReEarth helps people find freshly-tilled soil with no toxic heavy metals! Become a part of the New Earth homesteading revolution, grow your own greens and save what's left of the planet!

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#282

Post by genman »

avgcorrection wrote: post #205
genman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, indeed, it is not, but coincidentally today a person was imprisoned for 50 years for being a little critical about the king of Thailand. 50 years! A young man! It clearly foreshadows this otherwise very good news. Many people I know live considerable time of the year in Thailand and they are very supportive of the country but in my opinion this particular legislation clearly reminds that not everything is good t…

> Similarly we should not close our eyes in case of US when it is gravitation toward less freedom. But this news is not about US. - New rare earth metal reserves found in Utah - How will this affect the notorious police-on-black brutality issue?

I honestly don't know, but as more money would flow into the state and new jobs would be created then it certainly will affect the social dynamics in some form, possibly affecting also the issue you point out.

PS. If you can (e.g. you are an American) then please explain it to a non-American. I looked at the available statistics (deaths by police) and while the overall statics of Utah looks bad, there is also very small black population in Utah, meaning that even small level of serious criminal activity would easily skew the statics and indeed the number of killings by police is usually 1 in a year or even 0 as happened in 2016 and 2023 or 2013 and some extra bad year like 2018 will considerably affect the statistics.

So why is Utah notorious but for example Vermont or Oregon is not?

Of course to an European the number of people killed by police in US is simply mind blowing. But what is even more mind blowing is number of homicides, especially among young people, but (really) notoriously among black people. Close to 50% of homicide victims are black people but they only form 10% of the population.

It is even worse, much worse, when the statics is age and sex adjusted https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7226a9.htm

My sincere question is - why to focus on these 12 deaths over 10 years and not on all these close to 100,000 deaths?

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#283

Post by Turing_Machine »

Legend2440 wrote: post #209
frabert wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Essentially no metals are mined in their pure elemental form - only the noble metals like gold or platinum.

Native copper exists. Sometimes even to a minable degree, as with the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#284

Post by uoaei »

fooker wrote: post #267
uoaei wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, looks like EVs are gonna be resource-constrained real soon unless new battery tech emerges.

Lithium is one of the most abundant solids in the universe. The earth has plenty, it's just going to become more and more economically feasible to extract it. You can even get reasonably large amounts from seawater if you have cheap energy.

Citations very sorely needed on every single one of your wild speculations.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#286

Post by _heimdall »

panick21_ wrote: post #278
_heimdall wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Man, so many things wrong here. First of all, many batteries run for longer then 10 years. It depends on many things but most of them will last far longer then 10 years. The most common LFP battery will last far, far longer. Second, end of life means 80% capacity. But in reality that doesn't mean you have to stop using them. You can continue to use it just fine for much longer then that. And even after that most car…

Oh I'm well aware of the expected life of lithium cells. I have around 75kWh of lithium batteries storing capacity from solar and running my house. The batteries are a few years old as best I could tell, salvaged vehicle cells.

I wouldn't recommend expecting more than 10 years out of cells if they're used regularly. Manufacturers will happily lay out math that points to 15-20 years of regular use, or even more, with 80% capacity. Take a look at what they're willing to warranty and its usually in the range of 5-10 years.

I do expect that we can find a storage solution that would allow us to make a huge dent in fossil fuel use, though I also expect we're decades off. We likely need a different battery chemistry all together, and even if it is lithium we will spend decades trying to mine enough lithium for replacement and by then the original batteries will have aged out. Solar has a similar problem unfortunately, the materials we use today aren't mined at a rate anywhere near what would be needed to replace existing power plants and by the time we can mine materials and manufacture panels the we'll be starting over replacing the earlier panels we installed.

> And you are not gone get people to not buy new cars

This right here is the fundamental problem. We'll never see people at large give up convenience or shiny object syndrome in favor of the environmental concerns they may feel so passionate about. Reducing energy use isn't that hard, we just have to be willing to sacrifice.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#287

Post by _heimdall »

panick21_ wrote: post #276
_heimdall wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh for sure, I have no idea how similar comparisons would shake out. I can say, though, that such comparisons pretty easily lead to tragedy of the commons problems. If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. Chasing the next miracle cure, in this case lithium batteries for energy storage, we can easily run down that path picking up all the…

> If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. That is fundamentally false. Energy austerity is the road to poverty and more environmental damage. Not to mention war. > Chasing the next miracle cure Nobody is claiming any miracles. > we can easily run down that path picking up all the ecological damage of lithium mining and new manufacturing…

> That is fundamentally false. Energy austerity is the road to poverty and more environmental damage. Not to mention war.

Who said anything about austerity? Its only austerity of an authority forced reduced consumption on the people, I'm arguing that we should make that choice individually because it'd the right thing to do.

> Nobody is claiming any miracles.

Anyone claiming that wind and solar can replace fossil fuel use at the current rate of power consumption is claiming a miracle cure. Most models and targets aim for storage capacity as little as 8 hours, well below even the 3 day target that is often recommended in residential applications. A large-scale grid can't depend on a single night's worth of reserve capacity.

> Lithium mining is not nearly the problem some of the propaganda suggest. At worsts its like other mining. Mostly its better. The total lithium amount needed is tiny even if you think all cars are going to be lithium batteries.

If its similar to or only a bit better than current mining, isn't that a problem? As far as I'm aware we aren't only causing environmental damage via our use of consumable fuels, mining practices today also cause serious issues and destroy plenty of ecosystems. If you think that isn't actually a problem worth solving I'd be interested to hear more.

> What you are really arguing actually is 'why should people in India and China be rich, it would be much better if they were poor'.

> Are you gone determine what is 'rich enough' and when people should stop? Is Europe to rich already?

You seem to be responding to something I never said. I never said anything about relative wealth, only about growth targets for gross domestic product. Your GDP can grow 2% whether you are starting out poor or rich.

My argument is that we continue to use more energy at a similar rate to GDP growth. Natural resources are limited and our impact on the environment cannot follow limitless growth.

Are you proposing that we can continue to use 2-3% more energy forever in perpetuity without consequence? If so please share more about how that would work. If not, then I guess we agree it isn't sustainable and can't go on forever.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#288

Post by defrost »

panick21_ wrote: post #276
_heimdall wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh for sure, I have no idea how similar comparisons would shake out. I can say, though, that such comparisons pretty easily lead to tragedy of the commons problems. If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. Chasing the next miracle cure, in this case lithium batteries for energy storage, we can easily run down that path picking up all the…

> If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. That is fundamentally false. Energy austerity is the road to poverty and more environmental damage. Not to mention war. > Chasing the next miracle cure Nobody is claiming any miracles. > we can easily run down that path picking up all the ecological damage of lithium mining and new manufacturing…

You're correct that lithium mining is digging holes in the dirt, much like iron ore.

That is not the problem.

The issue is concentrate processing, to get useful elements from the "dirt of interest".

That concentrate processing involves large quantities of sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide, and other fun agents and also requires long term storage of waste waters (with aforementioned acids) and storage of low-level radioactive waste.

This is the reason that Lynas was asked to leave Malaysia and why they are seeking other locations.

> Lithium mining is a drop in the bucked compared to iron and friends.

Apples, oranges, and a clear sign you're not familiar with the details of both.

FWiW I worked decades as an exploration geophysical surveyor, contributed to the seeting up, running, and sale of the world's largest commercial mineral intelligence database, visited many mining and processing operations aboout the globe.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-22/malaysians-divided-on...

    An Australian mining company has been told to "get lost" and "go back to Australia" amid an ongoing row over hundreds of thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste piling up in Malaysia.
https://www.australianmining.com.au/a-big-win-for-lynas-in-m...

https://www.australianresourcesandinvestment.com.au/2023/02/...

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#289

Post by abenga »

uoaei wrote: post #284
fooker wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lithium is one of the most abundant solids in the universe. The earth has plenty, it's just going to become more and more economically feasible to extract it. You can even get reasonably large amounts from seawater if you have cheap energy.

Citations very sorely needed on every single one of your wild speculations.

These are not "wild speculations", they are all widely know facts. It is more common in the earth's crust than lead, tin, uranium, etc which we mine magnitudes more per year [1], and there are significantly more reserves in seawater [2], where extraction is mostly limited by how much energy we need to use to extract it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... [2] https://www.science.org/content/article/seawater-could-provi...

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#290

Post by defrost »

abenga wrote: post #289
uoaei wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations very sorely needed on every single one of your wild speculations.

These are not "wild speculations", they are all widely know facts. It is more common in the earth's crust than lead, tin, uranium, etc which we mine magnitudes more per year [1], and there are significantly more reserves in seawater [2], where extraction is mostly limited by how much energy we need to use to extract it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... [2] https://www.science.org/co…

Dull speculation is more on the nail.

Do you know how many billions of dollars worth of platinum group elements (platinum; Pt, palladium; Pd and rhodium; Rh) are literally lying on the roads and roadsides of G20 countries?

As dust from in use catalytic converters it's substantial. And unrecovered.

There's a problem with economic feasibilty - extraction costs (digging up and processing every road surface and road side) are prohibitive - greater than the value of the material.

From your [2]

    The advance is still not likely cheap enough to compete with mining lithium on land,
In a nutshell this is still very much the issue with mining seawater for Lithium, Uranium, etc.

The 0.2 parts per million (PPM) is a problem, a literal ceiling on diminishing returns, the more you extract the less remains and it's tricky to keep processed seawater from mixing back with unprocessed.

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