Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We’re Going to Need More Lithium

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 136 posts

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#71

Post by thriftwy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #18
mrob wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but we can't be sure that no breakthrough in fuel cells or supercapacitors will make batteries obsolete.

We can't be sure that there won't be a breakthrough that will make all our phones and cars run on adenosine triphosphate, like everything else on this planet. But right now we have to work with what we have, and whatever knowledge and experience we thus gain will likely be useful post-unexpected-breakthroughs anyway.

ATP is not a storage medium.

That's like withing to make cars run on electricity. Duh! Generating that electricity on demand is still the hard part.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#72

Post by disnsj »

flexie wrote: post #22
Overtonwindow wrote: post #20

A novel idea for lithium is that much of our lithium recycling is done in other countries. If the government were to classify lithium as strategic security material, it would severely limit its exportation. Ergo retaining more of it domestically and encouraging domestic recycling. Lithium may arrive but it can never leave, so to speak.

An idea that the EU, China or any of your other large trading partners would never allow to fly for more than a split second without introducing reciprocal measures.

We live in reciprocal space now

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#73

Post by disnsj »

jogjayr wrote: post #33
nickthemagicman wrote: post #3

Sounds like these companies are good investment opportunities? No?

Doesn't the efficient market theory ensure that any outsized future returns are already reflected in the price?

Well doesn’t that make no sense at all?

Through what mechanism could a market know about the future? The market isn’t God or an oracle. It’s just a bunch of actors going back and forth.

You and I can’t predict the future, why would averaging out guesses be any better?

And if we’re both using the average of our initials guesses to correct our guesses, then the spread is reduced.... which looks like less uncertainty when in fact nothing fundamental has changed!

What the market is very good for is as a heuristic to solve the NP hard problem of how much to produce. (Misses first worked on this and then Hyek got the bank Of Sweden prize in economics).

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#74

Post by disnsj »

dozzie wrote: post #56
azernik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be useful for some raw materials - for example, osmium ($13,000/kg), rhenium ($2,750/kg), and iridium ($30,000/kg). All three of those are elements that are probably common in the Earth's mantle, but nowhere near the surface, and are mostly found in meteorites; all of them are used in high-performance alloys (high-temperature, corrosion-resistant, etc.) Doubling the world production of any of these would great…

> It may be useful for some raw materials - for example, osmium ($13,000/kg), rhenium ($2,750/kg), and iridium ($30,000/kg). Or tungsten, in the form of cylinders 6m long and 30cm in radius, transported gravitationally to their place of use.

Those sabots better land where they are supposed to!

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#75

Post by disnsj »

azernik wrote: post #23
zzzzzzzza wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mining asteroids in our lifetimes would primarily be useful for harvesting raw materials for constructing things in space, not sending the materials back down to earth.

It may be useful for some raw materials - for example, osmium ($13,000/kg), rhenium ($2,750/kg), and iridium ($30,000/kg). All three of those are elements that are probably common in the Earth's mantle, but nowhere near the surface, and are mostly found in meteorites; all of them are used in high-performance alloys (high-temperature, corrosion-resistant, etc.) Doubling the world production of any of these would great…

The price would probably collapse unless we find a huge market for it

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#76

Post by amelius »

scarlac wrote: post #59
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?

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?

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#77

Post by tomxor »

thecabinet wrote: post #64
tomxor wrote: post #61

> The next dozen years will drain less than 1 percent of the reserves in the ground That's actually an extremely large portion for such a short length of time (this is the entire planet we are talking about). That projection doesn't paint a very sustainable future compared to oil (yes I hate oil), I hope it's efficiently recycled or replaced with better tech.

Assuming lithium reserves work anything like oil reserves, the quantity of reserves depends on market process. When oil sells for $20/bb, oil that costs more than that to extract doesn't count towards the reserves. As the price goes up, the reserves increase, because you can extract oil from more challenging circumstances. This is why we've had 20-30 years of oil reserves for the last 50 years.

That is a big assumption but yes, I understand that "reserves" != "all", and you rightly describe the interrelationship between price and what is considered "extractable".

Even so, as an initial "world reserves" estimate, it's absolutely puny. Take into consideration that past the first "dozen years" demand will increase massively, at full adoption lithium will likely be short lived as a primary material to base batteries on. We don't know the extraction potential for whatever the "remaining" and "unknown" reserves are but thankfully EVs aren't intrinsically tied to lithium like ICE is to oil, so if lithium becomes overmined we are more likely to switch to other materials than go to extremes to extract more of it.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#78

Post by Turing_Machine »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #58
dozzie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It may be useful for some raw materials - for example, osmium ($13,000/kg), rhenium ($2,750/kg), and iridium ($30,000/kg). Or tungsten, in the form of cylinders 6m long and 30cm in radius, transported gravitationally to their place of use.

Rods from God?

Yep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#Project_Th...

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#79

Post by comicjk »

pscsbs wrote: post #28

If I wanted to invest in lithium, what companies or ETFs should I look at?

If you wanted to invest in lithium, someone should warn you that individuals without special knowledge should not get involved with picking commodities. You'll be buying a lot of volatility with no increase in expected return.

Re: We’re Going to Need More Lithium

#80

Post by mtgx »

tomxor wrote: post #61

> The next dozen years will drain less than 1 percent of the reserves in the ground That's actually an extremely large portion for such a short length of time (this is the entire planet we are talking about). That projection doesn't paint a very sustainable future compared to oil (yes I hate oil), I hope it's efficiently recycled or replaced with better tech.

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 propaganda, a lot of people must be thinking "well, it does ring kind of true, doesn't it?", even though their "facts" are 99% misleading.

Post reply on HN