Technically every non-landlocked county has a near-infinite supply of lithium. It's the extraction costs that are the problem.
Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
31–40 of 311 posts
Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lese Majeste has nothing to do with this news. Every country has problems.
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at the same time Thailand is no Congo.
the reason stuff like this gets downvoted is that it's pretty counterproductive to list a country's sins every single time an article remotely relevant is posted, to have it devolve in to a flame war
Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
#33Does 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.
Pretty sure the Salton Sea in california is gonna be a big lithium mine once it dries up
Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
#34Looks like existing worldwide reserves are 26M tons [0], so this is a big find. [0] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-lithium.pd...
The second sentence of the article states, "The find means Thailand has the third largest lithium resources, behind Bolivia and Argentina, but it is not yet clear how much can be exploited commercially." If Thailand has 14M and there are two others with >14M then total known resources must be at least 42M tons, no?
Reserves and resources are different measures, same doc says 98M resources.
Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the new oil, so I would be careful. Democracy and camaraderie and all those greater good things tend to come where the cheap resources are.
Deposits appear sufficiently distributed to not cause geopolitical conflicts [1]. This is not oil. Lithium is relatively abundant, and a mineral to be reused, not energy to be consumed once through. To keep it conflict free, we must continue to discover reserves and drive down the value of the commodity. No one goes to war over say, salt, in the 21st century (at least not yet!). [1] https://lithiumfuture.org/map.html
Can you clarify about reuse? At least as far as batteries go, right now once it's in a battery it gets used up & then ends up in the trash [2]. There's no efficient / cost-effective way to extract lithium from spent batteries for reuse in new batteries. We might in the future but it would require some scientific advances + expensive commercialization to scale up. Even if in the future we do develop a mechanism, it could remain very expensive & not be practical until mining costs have gone up enough. Similarly, all batteries that have been consumed until that point are likely irrecoverable as they're in the waste stream & finding & collecting those batteries is unlikely to ever be economical.
[1] https://americanbatterytechnology.com/lithium-costs-a-lot-of...
[2] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a42417327/li...
Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
#36Does 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.
There is also the lithium in the California Salton Sea which is further along in getting into production.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/us-department-energy-an...
Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
#37How more stories do we need about finding lithium and "rare" earth metals being found before people realize they're not all that rare and we can stop reporting on it as if it's special?
Lithium is so 'not' rare that you can find it in the geothermal water in... Belgium.
https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/geothermal-developer-hita-see...
Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the new oil, so I would be careful. Democracy and camaraderie and all those greater good things tend to come where the cheap resources are.
Deposits appear sufficiently distributed to not cause geopolitical conflicts [1]. This is not oil. Lithium is relatively abundant, and a mineral to be reused, not energy to be consumed once through. To keep it conflict free, we must continue to discover reserves and drive down the value of the commodity. No one goes to war over say, salt, in the 21st century (at least not yet!). [1] https://lithiumfuture.org/map.html
The 2019 Bolivian political crisis [1] came right off the heels of Evo Morales negotiating lithium trade with Russia and China. Bolivia happens to have the largest lithium reserves of any nation.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Bolivian_political_cris...
Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lese Majeste has nothing to do with this news. Every country has problems.
[flagged]
Imagine that this article was about a lithium deposit found in the USA.
Would you find it productive / relevant for me to say
- Ah! That same country that is going back to the 50s in women's rights? - Ah! That some country that had the most gold medals in the last olympic?
I'm guessing not. Why should it be acceptable to say something completely unrelated about Thailand? It's even worse if it's something negative.
It would be fine if it were something relevant about Thailand (their mining legislation, for example)
Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deposits appear sufficiently distributed to not cause geopolitical conflicts [1]. This is not oil. Lithium is relatively abundant, and a mineral to be reused, not energy to be consumed once through. To keep it conflict free, we must continue to discover reserves and drive down the value of the commodity. No one goes to war over say, salt, in the 21st century (at least not yet!). [1] https://lithiumfuture.org/map.html
Can you clarify about reuse? At least as far as batteries go, right now once it's in a battery it gets used up & then ends up in the trash [2]. There's no efficient / cost-effective way to extract lithium from spent batteries for reuse in new batteries. We might in the future but it would require some scientific advances + expensive commercialization to scale up. Even if in the future we do develop a mechanism, it co…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2023/11/02/redwood-...
> In 2024, a quarter million aging electric vehicles will be ready for dismantling and recycling. That could be more than a 30% jump from 2023 — and Redwood Materials, which aims to be the country's leading EV battery recycler, is ramping up its operations to prepare for the coming onslaught.
> The company created by Tesla cofounder JB Straubel, which also makes components for new batteries from materials it recovers from old ones, expects some 250,000 aging Tesla Model S sedans, Nissan Leaf hatchbacks, Toyota Priuses, Prius plug-ins and other hybrids, to turn up at dismantler lots in 2024 — with more coming every year after. That’s up from between 150,000 to 200,000 this year. To ensure it gets as many of those old batteries as possible, it’s launched a web portal to quickly give auto dismantlers purchase offers and schedule trucks to haul them away for recycling.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/redwood-inks-long-term... ("Redwood inks long-term EV battery materials supply deal with Toyota")
Redwood Materials is currently operational, processing the waste stream. Ford and Volvo are also partners. They'll also accept EV packs that are damaged, defective or recalled (DDR) on an ad hoc basis if you open a ticket with their team.
https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/auto-recyclers-battery-port...
(have shipped them old Leaf and Tesla packs)