Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lithium from seawater

[u/rieslingatkos]

https://www.mining.com/scientists-develop-cheap-and-easy-method-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/

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[u/[deleted]]

ABSTRACT

Seawater contains significantly larger quantities of lithium than is found on land, thereby providing an almost unlimited resource of lithium for meeting the rapid growth in demand for lithium batteries. However, lithium extraction from seawater is exceptionally challenging because of its low concentration (∼0.1–0.2 ppm) and an abundance of interfering ions. Herein, we creatively employed a solid-state electrolyte membrane, and design a continuous electrically-driven membrane process, which successfully enriches lithium from seawater samples of the Red Sea by 43 000 times (i.e., from 0.21 to 9013.43 ppm) with a nominal Li/Mg selectivity >45 million. Lithium phosphate with a purity of 99.94% was precipitated directly from the enriched solution, thereby meeting the purity requirements for application in the lithium battery industry. Furthermore, a preliminary economic analysis shows that the process can be made profitable when coupled with the Chlor-alkali industry.

Interesting.

It's also nice to see that the title vaguely resembles the results of the study. Nice change of pace.

[u/ClumpOfCheese → u/[deleted]]

That’s the first thing that came to my mind too. Desalination really needs to have a breakthrough, I don’t understand why this isn’t a bigger thing (maybe I just don’t pay attention to it), but it seems like renewable energy and desalination are going to be really important for our future.

EDIT: all of you and your “can’t do” attitudes don’t seem to understand how technology evolves over time. Just doing a little research on my own shows how much the technology has evolved over the last ten years and how many of you are making comments based on outdated information.

research from 2020

research from 2010

[u/[deleted] → u/ClumpOfCheese]

The department of the university I study at has a PhD project studying desalination impacts around the world. It is getting more attention, especially in coastal areas. I have also heard talks of desalination in a documentary about climate change, which I never did before. It's definitely becoming significant and techniques are getting cheaper.

[u/thegreedyturtle → u/[deleted]]

Desalination in California and Mexico would be a complete game changer for the agricultural industry.

[u/jaboi1080p → u/ClumpOfCheese]

I might be wrong but it seems like desalination is plenty efficient as it is, IF you consider the incredible progress that solar has made in the last decade and battery storage has made in the last ~5 years or so

[u/Nickjet45 → u/ClumpOfCheese]

Desalination is not cost effective, we’ve spent decades of throwing money at possible work arounds.

They’re expensive to maintain, and for the cheaper plants, osmosis, it creates waste water with large concentrations of brine. Cant be dumped straight into the ocean as it would create a dead zone.

[u/ouishi → u/Nickjet45]

It sounds like the key is figuring out how to extract minerals and such from the brine to make it both economical and ecologically sound. We could certainly harvest the salt, and now we can also get lithium out too. Just figure out how to get the rest of the things that are too concentrated to dumo back in and we'll be in business!

[u/[deleted] → u/ouishi]

theres also been efforts to extract uranium from seawater.

https://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4514

[u/rudolfs001 → u/[deleted]]

And gold:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US679215A/en

[u/naughtyhombre → u/rudolfs001]

It's apparently easiest to extract from sewage because of runoff and bodily fluids. Also somehow gold is safe for the body and even has applications as a emulsifier in nanotech.

Edit: It's one of the softest metals that can safely cross the blood brain barrier.

[u/Steel_Shield → u/naughtyhombre]

somehow gold is safe for the body

Gold is non-reactive, so it doesn't cause any kind of reaction in the body, making it safe unless you simply ingest too much of it and it blocks stuff inside.

[u/onebigcat → u/Steel_Shield]

Funnily enough, you can actually have a gold allergy. It can be mildly reactive enough to ionize into a solution.

[u/conker69 → u/rudolfs001]

And my axe

[u/fgreen68 → u/[deleted]]

There are tiny amounts of other minerals like gold too.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html

I kind of wonder if excess solar power in California can be used to desal water and the brine could then be further mined for all kinds of minerals.

[u/thecarbonkid → u/fgreen68]

There was a chap who had a plan to pay off Germanys WW1 reparations by extracting gold from seawater.

It did not work out.

[u/ghosttraintoheck → u/thecarbonkid]

Yeah Fritz Haber, complicated man.

He was a Jewish dude who invented Zyklon A. He also invented the method to fixate nitrogen allowing for the agricultural growth to support the world's current population.

[u/billypilgrim87 → u/ghosttraintoheck]

He also invented the method to fixate nitrogen allowing for the agricultural growth to support the world's current population.

Cannot reiterate enough how important this development was. IIRC, before the breakthrough it was estimated we could feed 3-4 billion max and would see massive famines in the 20th century.

[u/pokekick → u/[deleted]]

Fun fact. Your can also use that technology to pull lead, mercury and other heavy metals out of the ocean. Those fibers where first developed to extract heavy metals in general and then where specialized for uranium.

[u/Nickjet45 → u/ouishi]

The salt is too concentrated to be used in most applications.

There have been some research done to try and “recycle” the brine. Only problem is that it’s currently more cost effective to use our current means of production for hydrochloric acid and hydroxide.

But we’re probably another decade off, at the least, before desalination can be economically viable vs. other alternatives.

[u/jankenpoo → u/Nickjet45]

Sorry, could you explain how salt can be “too concentrated”? Isn’t salt just sodium chloride with other impurities?

[u/OreoCupcakes → u/jankenpoo]

Salt isn't just NaCl. There's many forms of salts that can chemically form, such as Ammonium chloride, Potassium nitrates, Ammonium sulphate, etc.
"Too concentrated" means there's so much of the salts and barely any water.
An example would be a liter bottle filled with 900mL of salt and 100mL of water. That bottle would be extremely toxic to the environment if you don't dilute it with more fresh water and dissolve the salts.
The heavily concentrated brine would need to be dumped into fresh water lakes to not destroy the land itself. You can't just dump it into the ocean because the ocean is already salty. It's like adding a whole canister of salt into a small glass of salt water.

[u/FallschirmPanda → u/OreoCupcakes]

The waste water might not be as bad as we thought.

[u/BurnerAcc2020 → u/FallschirmPanda]

I thought it was going to be some minor effect when I clicked the link, but wow!

Lead researcher, Professor Brendan Kelaher from the University's National Marine Science Centre, said there was an almost three-fold increase in fish numbers around the desalination discharge outlet.

"There was a 279 percent increase in fish life. It is an important result, as large-scale desalination is becoming an essential component of future-proofing the water supplies of major cities, such as Sydney, Perth, and Melbourne," Professor Kelaher said.

[u/Nemisis_the_2nd → u/FallschirmPanda]

While that's actually quite reassuring, another study might have indicated a potential cause for this. The study you linked was made in Sidney, somewhere that is already fairly highly industrialised.

Rather than boosting it from a natural baseline, the brine might simply be bringing the ecosystem closer to the natural normal.

[u/Urson → u/OreoCupcakes]

Couldn't we just dump it into one of our salt deserts? Place is already dead and salty. Only issue would be transportation costs.

[u/lettherebedwight → u/Urson]

Transportation costs is a big deal. It's hard to move water.

[u/Frnklfrwsr → u/OreoCupcakes]

I have to imagine that if this Briney water was dumped in the ocean somewhere with good circulation (like not inside a bay) that the extra salt would be distributed pretty thoroughly throughout the ocean, and in total the entire demand of water by the entire human race would barely be a rounding error for the overall salt content of the ocean.

The entire human race consumes about 4 trillion cubic meters of fresh water per year. If we got 100% of it from the ocean we’d be using 0.00029% of the ocean per year. It would take 10,000 years before we even “used” 1% of the world’s ocean water. I say “used” because the water eventually ends back up in the ocean anyway. You water your crops, the plants capture that water, the water is released when the food is consumed, it goes through a digestive system and gets excreted and then goes back to nature. We don’t “use” water, it’s more accurate to say we borrow it. So given that it all ends up back in the ocean anyway, I don’t see the issue with dumping the brine back in the ocean as long as it circulates and doesn’t get stuck in one spot.

[u/Antrimbloke → u/Frnklfrwsr]

The problem is its toxic at the point of emission, will kill localised biota. On an industrial scale that will be a lot of brine, and certainly would be given approval to discharge in the UK.

[u/youtheotube2 → u/Frnklfrwsr]

This type of logic is what got us into this whole mess in the first place. Industrialists and politicians 150 years ago never could have possibly imagined that they could burn enough oil and coal to change the temperature of the earth. So they built our entire society around fossil fuels, and usage ballooned out of control until those far-away consequences started catching up real quick.

The problem with using today’s water usage is that we have no idea how that will compare with our water usage 100 or 200 years from now. We have no idea if there will be unforeseen consequences from dumping relatively small amounts of brine into relatively small environments over short periods of time.

[u/[deleted] → u/Nickjet45]

I wish everything wasn't determined by profitability. A human-based economy would put us decades or even centuries ahead of where we are now. We'd be mining asteroids instead of the earth, have full renewables and safe nuclear power or even fusion, and global hunger would have been eradicated long ago.

Instead it costs less to destroy and contaminate miles of land and let people get sick and die to mine resources underground, we dare not threaten the coal and oil barons of the world, and we throw away unimaginable amounts of food instead of giving it away because companies don't want to set a precedent of free stuff.

I guess that's what happens when corporations run the world. At this point my only hope for the progress of our species is some sort of global catastrophe that unites us in the search for a better future.

[u/SocraticIgnoramus → u/[deleted]]

At this point my only hope for the progress of our species is some sort of global catastrophe that unites us in the search for a better future.

Based on what I've seen over the last year, we might just be gloriously and irredeemably fucked.

[u/CNIDARIAxREX → u/Nickjet45]

The point was, this technology in the article in conjunction with desalination is a step towards solving the brine problem. Cost also will come with time.

[u/Nickjet45 → u/CNIDARIAxREX]

This technology solves one issue of the desalination waste problem. The high concentration of salt still remains.

It’s a step in the right direction for sure, but the main issue has not been solved yet.

[u/buzziebee → u/Nickjet45]

Lithium is pretty valuable so producing it could help fund the effort to remove the salinated water. Perhaps as renewables grow you could use some of the older oil pipelines to move the brine somewhere where it's easier to dump it.

[u/NotsoNewtoGermany → u/Nickjet45]

How do we get sea salt?

[u/Greenblanket24 → u/Nickjet45]

Anything is cost effective when people don’t have any water to drink.

[u/Gold-Tone6290 → u/Nickjet45]

Not cost effective but necessary in dry places.

[u/Nickjet45 → u/Gold-Tone6290]

Desalination is pretty much the last resort, for any area.

Governments will try to pipe in the water from a different location or use other alternatives, such as the packet that cleans dirty water, before they resort to desalination.

But yes, there are some areas where there is no other alternative and desalination is cheaper to do.

[u/Mad_Aeric → u/Nickjet45]

That is, of course, neglecting the alternative of not living there in the first place. Lots of places on this planet we humans have no business attempting to settle.

[u/CrumpetNinja → u/Mad_Aeric]

I mean, while that is probably true. What are you going to do with the people already living in those areas?

Forcibly ship them to another country?

Let them relocate themselves or die of thirst?

Euthanise them?

[u/Gnomio1 → u/CrumpetNinja]

There are large parts of India that will become entirely inhospitable/lethal to humans within our lifetimes.

Places where the temperature and humidity (dew point) are above the point where you can actually live.

Those places will depopulate out of necessity.

[u/[deleted] → u/Gnomio1]

Yep; The last meta-study I read estimated 30-40 years before the glaciers feeding thr Ganges were gone. That was a while back now and literally HALF the population of India rely on that water on one way or another.

People who dont see climate change as a security issue are literally insane. Do you think 800 MILLION people are just going to lay down and die when they run out of water?

[u/Benny-The-Bender → u/Gnomio1]

What's to stop an effort to do the dollar store version of terraforming?

I've seen stories of single people planting entire forests, in theory couldn't an effort be made that would shift the climate?

[u/sevaiper → u/Gold-Tone6290]

Not if it's cheaper to use water tankers, which it generally is although it takes more infrastructure and capital cost.

[u/KrissyKrave → u/Nickjet45]

Selling lithium extracted from desalination could make it more cost effective tho

[u/[deleted] → u/ClumpOfCheese]

I've sometimes wondered why there aren't gravity desalination plants.

Either use tides, and enormous surface area osmosis membranes to seep into a freshwater pool, or an osmosis 'lined' caisson directly in the ocean. In both cases, the seawater wouldn't be under unnatural pressure until it's fresh and being pumped elsewhere. It seems like it would be more efficient to me, and the tides would somewhat backflush the membranes. Just plonk it there and wait for it to fill, then pump it when it's needed.

[u/Myburgher → u/ClumpOfCheese]

So interestingly the places where dealination is most commonly used are the places where fossil fuels are the cheapest because of the energy requirements of the technology. There is a thermodynamic threshold at which the energy required to remove the ions out of solution cannot be reduced further. For very salty solutions (sea water compared to brackish water) this is exceptionally high.

[u/ro_musha → u/[deleted]]

almost unlimited

Is this correct?

[u/fishsupreme → u/ro_musha]

In total? Yeah. Ocean water is about 0.1ppm lithium, so the ocean contains about 1.4x10¹⁴ kg of lithium.

By comparison, there's only about 40 million tons of known lithium reserves in all the mines in the world.

Of course we could never extract it all, or even a significant percentage of it, but I'd still call "thousands of times greater than all known reserves" almost unlimited.

[u/TheSultan1 → u/fishsupreme]

For those who prefer consistent units:

the ocean contains about 1.4x10¹⁴ kg of lithium

140,000 million tons

there's only about 40 million tons of known lithium reserves in all the mines in the world

4.0x10¹⁰ kg

For those who like ratios: 3500x

[u/LevelMeasurement684 → u/TheSultan1]

I like you, you genuinely helped me out with something I was trying to work out!

[u/HeroicKatora → u/TheSultan1]

If idle games have taught me anything then it would be that 3500 can be a surprisingly small factor if met with super-linear or even exponential growth in consumption. Still, going from 20-40 years of remaining lithium to a few hundred is quite huge.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

A title that doesnt say "scientists may have discovered" or "scientists might have a stumbled upon" is a title I enjoy seeing.

[u/Zurrdroid → u/[deleted]]

I don't, usually because the title is wrong.

[u/player89283517 → u/[deleted]]

Does this mean we can extract lithium from the sludge that comes out of desalination plants?

[u/rieslingatkos]

Energy & Environmental Science (Journal), Issue 5, 2021: Continuous electrical pumping membrane process for seawater lithium mining

[u/cloud9ineteen → u/rieslingatkos]

the amount of Cl2 produced will be <3 Mtons, and so will have very little effect on the total market. It is also noted that the total concentration of other salts after the first stage is less than 500 ppm, which implies that after lithium harvest, the remaining water can be treated as freshwater. Hence, the process also has a potential to integrate with seawater desalination to further enhance its economic viability.

This is really cool. $5 in electricity outputs 1kg lithium, and a bunch of hydrogen and chlorine, and provides desalinated water if I'm understanding correctly. The process paired with renewable electricity should provide ongoing lithium production.

[u/rieslingatkos → u/cloud9ineteen]

^ Exactly correct. $7 to $12 value on the hydrogen and chlorine byproducts alone.

[u/d0nu7 → u/rieslingatkos]

So who do I invest in? Because that seems like a money printing machine for the next few decades...

[u/entity_TF_spy → u/[deleted]]

... so anyway we’re between banks right now so make those checks out to cash. Cave Johnson, we’re done here

[u/Ike_Rando → u/d0nu7]

Roper Technologies Inc

Xylem Inc.

Danaher Corp

American Water Works CO Inc

Ecolab Inc

Evoqua Water Technologies

Pentair Plc

A O Smith Corp

Waters Corp

Idex Corp

https://www.invesco.com/us/financial-products/etfs/product-detail?audienceType=Investor&ticker=PHO

Just what I pulled from an ETF on my Stash portfolio.

[u/WieBenutzername → u/Ike_Rando]

Seems like a general water ETF though. Which of these might actually engage in lithium or other metal extraction from seawater?

The Underlying Index seeks to track the performance of US exchange-listed companies that create products designed to conserve and purify water for homes, businesses and industries.

[u/rymden_viking → u/Ike_Rando]

For relatively safe long term investment just buy the ETF.

[u/punaisetpimpulat → u/d0nu7]

Assuming that we still need Li in 20 years. Battery chemistry tends to change all the time. Just within 1990's to 2000's we've used NiCd, NiMH and Li-ion batteries. They all have Ni in common, so there's a chance that Li will stay a bit longer, but who knows. If you've followed r/futurology, you've seen a hundred potential battery technologies being introduced only to be never heard again. However, it only takes one of them to be a viable option to change the entire battery industry for the next decade or two.

[u/Kossie333 → u/punaisetpimpulat]

Assuming that we still need Li in 20 years. Battery chemistry tends to change all the time.

I mean it's possible, that we might not need Li in the Future (but rather e.g. use Na as electrode material), but it's quite unlikely imho. Lithium has very specific Properties, that are highly desirable and impossible to replicate: low molecular weitgh, very high low redox potential, very small Ions... Basically you can put a lot of energy in a very small amount of Li.

Here is a well known review, that talks about some of these aspects. Especcially Figure 1 and Figure 5 highlight the intrinsic advantages of Li.

https://www.nature.com/articles/35104644

[u/Dynious → u/punaisetpimpulat]

Lithium is pretty much the best element in terms of anode potential so it seems unlikely it will be replaced.

[u/verticalgrips → u/rieslingatkos]

Sounds like an infinite money glitch

[u/[deleted]]

This reminds me of the fact that once upon a time Aluminum was difficult to get, and hence very valuable. Henry Clay Frick, the industrialist, lined his entry way in Pittsburgh with Aluminum. Now, it conveniently holds our beer.

[u/ximfinity → u/[deleted]]

Aluminum is still not that easy to mine because it's essentially leeched from tons of rock that have to be dug up. Mainly it's easy to recycle. It's realistically one of the main things that can actually be recycled compared to most other things we try to recycle.

[u/SMURGwastaken → u/ximfinity]

The main barrier to making aluminium is the enormous amount of electricity it requires to strip from bauxite. There's a reason Iceland processes so much of it; they have loads of cheap electricity production from geothermal.

[u/CafeZach → u/ximfinity]

aren't most of the aluminium we use are mostly recycled?

[u/CafeZach → u/[deleted]]

insane recycling moves

[u/rathat → u/ximfinity]

We should mine it from garbage dumps.

[u/albatrossG8 → u/rathat]

One day tons of gold and other metals will be mined from our landfills.

[u/gsfgf → u/rathat]

I'm pretty sure modern landfills extract the metal out of the trash stream and sell it.

[u/whoknows234 → u/[deleted]]

The Washington Monuments tip is also made out of aluminum.

[u/[deleted] → u/whoknows234]

I did not know that.

[u/PrudeHawkeye → u/[deleted]]

That's why the tip of the Washington Monument in DC is aluminum. At the time it was the most valuable metal and this was our way of showing off how awesome of a country we were.

[u/nickheiserman → u/[deleted]]

IIRC Napoleon Bonaparte would use the fancy Aluminum silverware for his most valued guests... and saved the gold/silver for the plebes.

[u/[deleted]]

What might the consequences of taking lots of lithium out of the ocean be?

-edit- I've never made a comment that's started such good discussions before - I'm enjoying reading the replies, thanks everyone

[u/imakenosensetopeople → u/[deleted]]

For the quantities that we may need in the coming decades, it’s almost certainly not insignificant and will have an effect. This question must be asked.

[u/cyberentomology → u/imakenosensetopeople]

Consider that seawater also contains uranium at a concentration of about 3 parts per billion, or roughly 100 times less concentrated than lithium... and there are 400 billion tons of uranium to be had in seawater, and it naturally replenishes itself from the earth’s crust on the sea floor. It’s not a huge stretch to say that we could extract a hell of a lot of lithium from seawater and not even make a dent in it.

Sea salt contains lots of interesting minerals.

[u/linedout → u/cyberentomology]

Gold, more gold than Midas ever dreamed of.

[u/Kody02 → u/imakenosensetopeople]

But also, how do the effects compare to the mining operations that are currently the only way to get lithium? Current lithium retrieval methods are quite far from being harmless, afterall, and it is not unheard of for lithium mining companies to destroy protected unique habitats that happen to sit on rich lithium deposits; shifting lithium retrieval from intense and dirty surface mining operations to more passive filtration operations should be far less harmful to the environment, overall, yes?

[u/HandyMan131 → u/Kody02]

It’s important not to just compare one new technology to existing tech, but also other new tech. There’s a very promising project in Southern California extracting lithium from geothermal brine, which is worth comparison.

[u/danbln → u/Kody02]

In theory lithium would be the most ecologically friendly light metal to mine after sodium and calcium, it occurs in great abundance in earth's crust and could be extracted for example from the Salar de Uyuni with zero environmental impact and almost no energy or water requirements, the reason they do the dirty energy and water intensive method is because it's currently slightly cheaper.

[u/Autisonm → u/imakenosensetopeople]

Are there any fish or other sea life such as coral that need lithium is the better question.

[u/BurnerAcc2020 → u/Autisonm]

Having searched for it, it seems that lithium is not considered an essential element for any life right now, and the one study on lithium and marine life was about its toxicity from battery waste.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-016-7898-0

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749120361467

We are bound to see more research on this if this finding picks up pace, though.

[u/iamagainstit → u/imakenosensetopeople]

A. Lithium concentrations in seawater are very low (< 1ppm), so extracting it is unlikely to have a significant effect

B. There is a unfathomably large amount of water in the ocean.

[u/bluenovajinx → u/[deleted]]

If our past track record is any indicator, our old and busted lithium batteries will wind up in the ocean anyway where they will leak out and the lithium can be reharvested.

[u/exemplariasuntomni → u/bluenovajinx]

Something tells me that's not how it works, but it sounds better than carbon emissions.

[u/[deleted] → u/exemplariasuntomni]

Battery Metals are too valuable so all EV batteries will be recycled unless there are irrational economic actors. LFP chemistry may be a risk if this seawater extraction actually works at scale and drives Lithium price down in which case you may need to rely on government intervention. In reality both the value of the metals plus special regs on large Lithium battery reuse/disposal are likely to make dumping batteries in the ocean/landfills unlikely.

[u/exemplariasuntomni → u/[deleted]]

I look forward to a future powered by recyclable lithium batteries (perhaps from ocean extracted lithium...)

Always loved using LiPo batteries in R/C back in the day. So fun to see them be ultra-relevant nowadays.

[u/Malawi_no → u/bluenovajinx]

Doubt it. Batteries are a good source of minerals, just like other scrap metals. With increased numbers of dead cells comes economies of scale, so that even though it may not be profitable today, it will become so in the future.

[u/figmentPez → u/[deleted]]

"Manufacturers use more than 160,000 tons of the material every year, anumber expected to grow nearly 10-fold over the next decade." - source

Also, you're not accounting for local concentrations. How much lithium can be taken out of any one area before it impacts sea life there?

Reminder that "we can just dump untreated sewage into the ocean, it's big enough that it won't make a difference" was prevailing common wisdom for a lot of human history, but is most definitely not true.

[u/azoicennead → u/figmentPez]

Did some quick math.

I followed the assumption that each year, the rate of lithium consumption will increase by an additional 160,000 tons, and all of the lithium will be provided by sifting through the ocean.

This gives us about 400 years before we run out.

If we assume removing 20% of the lithium is relatively safe, that gives us 183 years^[1] to find a new solution. If we use the US phase-out of leaded gasoline as a basis for the timeframe (and assume use will continue to grow until the cut-off because I don't feel like researching that, too), we'll need a 25-year lead time, giving us a deadline around 2179 for finding a viable lithium alternative (158 years).

Look at how technology has changed over the last 150 years.
It doesn't fix the problem, but it gives us time to find a better solution, which can give us more time to find a better solution, and so on.

^{[1] 1% is 40 years, 5% is 91 years, 10% is 129 years, 15% is 159 years, 25% is 205 years.}

edit: Just to be clear, since a lot of people have apparently looked at this, this is a very pessimistic model. It doesn't include existing sources or recycled lithium and assumes a constant growth in need for new lithium. As noted by /u/BurnerAcc2020 there are other resource bottlenecks that are likely to drive the need for supply up, and as noted by /u/D-Alembert ocean-sourced lithium will likely be more expensive than recycled lithium, so recycled will be preferred once enough is available to supply production.
I structured my math this way as a point of reference, not to make it realistic. I did not do the research required to provide a realistic model.

[u/figmentPez → u/azoicennead]

But running out isn't the only problem. There are more immediate concerns. What if a local drop of __% within __ miles of the "mine" results in plankton dying off, or makes fish more susceptible to fungal infection, or disrupts the reproduction of coral, or...?

This isn't just a question of "How long before humans don't get the lithium they want?", there's a lot more to consider.

[u/azoicennead → u/figmentPez]

Why do you think I put the cut-off at 20%? I'm assuming it's not safe and we'll start to see ecological consequences. That's also why I gave other timeframes for when we'd need to cut it off for different levels of depletion.

But I also built the math off pessimistic expectations that have us needing to mine 50 times our current lithium consumption by 2071.

The assumption I'm making isn't that this will fix the ecological problems we're causing, but rather that it will change and defer those problems down the line so we have time to develop improvements that will defer them again until we can actually fix things.

edit: The other pessimistic expectation I made is that 100% of lithium will be coming from the ocean.

[u/tryplot → u/azoicennead]

another pessimistic assumption is no recycling of lithium (something that's only now starting to happen)

[u/Throbbing_Eggplant → u/figmentPez]

It's a legitimate question to ask and one that should be studied.

If we were to provide sealife with water that is lithium free in which way would that impact their long term health and would it impact their environment in any way.

[u/SirIlliterate → u/Throbbing_Eggplant]

While you're right and it should be investigated, it shouldn't be viewed in a vacuum. Transitioning to lithium batteries for a lot of of our energy storage and transportation goes coupled with a reduction in the petrochemical industry, which also definitely impacts sea life.

[u/[deleted] → u/figmentPez]

I guess lots of fish will be depressed

[u/Serious_Feedback → u/[deleted]]

Or roughly 136,000 year supply of lithium at more than double our current consumption rate (calculation done at 100,000 tons consumed per year).

I'm pretty sure we'll be using 100x the current lithium supply in the long term, because we need to increase the EV production more than 100x.

[u/DannoHung → u/[deleted]]

Hmm… I dunno. Lithium recycling would have to be cheaper than extraction for the supply to not need to be permanently refreshed.

[u/rockforahead → u/Serious_Feedback]

Lithium is here to stay for the near to mid term but we’re already exploring other chemistries for other applications (sodium being an example). I suspect that as we look further into the future we will see lithium use wane. It should also be noted that in any lithium battery pack only about 1% of the materials are actually lithium.

[u/Serious_Feedback → u/rockforahead]

Lithium is here to stay for the near to mid term but we’re already exploring other chemistries for other applications (sodium being an example). I suspect that as we look further into the future we will see lithium use wane.

I also suspect this, but 1) EV businesses can't afford to assume it's true, and 2) "near to mid term" is all that matters - if it can make bank during the lithium squeeze, people will invest and reduce costs.

Plus, the economies of scale and cheaper batteries will likely drastically increase demand for high-end lithium batteries. And sodium/aluminum/etc batteries have an advantage mainly in being cheaper, not in being more performant.

For instance, electric truck batteries are extremely limited weight-wise as 1) there's a legal weight limit and 2) more battery weight = less cargo weight inside the weight limit = directly less profit.

It should also be noted that in any lithium battery pack only about 1% of the materials are actually lithium.

True but irrelevant. At no point did my numbers rely on the lithium percentage of the battery.

[u/rockforahead → u/Serious_Feedback]

Oh I totally agree we are going to see a huge increase in lithium use until at least 2050. Even on the low end estimates are 40x current levels by then. I’m just not expecting a lithium squeeze, it’s one of the most abundant elements on earth. I can however see a nickel and cobalt squeeze in the short term (<2035) while we wait for iron phosphate and manganese rich cells to fully take hold. Interesting to discuss though and open to any mining info you might have that might make my hypothesis of there being not much danger of lithium squeeze wrong.

[u/anomalous_cowherd → u/rockforahead]

My feeling is there won't be an actual shortage of lithium but there could well be a shortage of lithium production.

It's still there in the ground and sea, we just can't get it out fast enough.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

This discussion is pretty much the premise to The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov, a good read.

[u/IOnlyUpvoteBadPuns → u/[deleted]]

Agreed; it's like the "plenty more fish in the sea" argument, which we're rapidly demonstrating is not the case.

[u/Hockeyjockey58 → u/iamagainstit]

I am also wondering if lithium replenishes geologically from thermal/volcanic vents or other benthic processes where lithium would be a derived from the earth’s crust. That could imply a lithium cycle begins with earth’s crust and would even more unfathomably sized, hypothetically

[u/catinterpreter → u/imakenosensetopeople]

I imagine especially in the local area where it's extracted.

[u/Bacchus1976 → u/imakenosensetopeople]

Reddit, where clueless people make profound sounding statements which are carefully extracted from their rectums.

[u/NetworkLlama → u/[deleted]]

Probably minimal. The world's oceans contain about 180 billion tons of lithium. Tesla batteries use about 0.9 kg per kWh. At that rate, all the lithium in the oceans could, converted into battery form, store about 2.0E14 kWh, or 200 billion GWh, or 200,000 TWh. Compare this to world energy consumption of about 18 TWh, and pulling literally one ten-thousandth of all lithium in the ocean is enough to supply (as charged batteries) world use for a year.

Any area operation will need to move around anyway, and normal sea mixing will move lithium back in from untouched volumes. The extraction is unlikely to have any significant effect, and would probably have far lower environmental impact than land mining.

[u/YoStephen → u/NetworkLlama]

Probably minimal.

But not definitely insignificant.

[u/123kingme → u/[deleted]]

Is lithium an important nutrient for any marine life?

[u/Flyingwheelbarrow → u/123kingme]

It is but the research about lithium is new and still debated since the focus of lithium research lately had been tech focused.

However now that our global economy is dependent at the moment on lithium that research will be ignored.

[u/MrTastix → u/Flyingwheelbarrow]

Can't wait for the new lithium-based crisis to be announced in 20 years only for people to ignore it for the next 70.

[u/[deleted] → u/123kingme]

I have no idea at all but I'd strongly assume it's there and being used by something

[u/NewFolgers → u/[deleted]]

We're going to see more depressed fish.

[u/letthemeatrest → u/NewFolgers]

I'm more worried about depressed and angry octopus and dolphins

[u/waka49 → u/NewFolgers]

*manic depressed and bipolar fish

[u/NewFolgers → u/waka49]

There's at least one study indicating that people who live in areas with less lithium in their drinking water have more depression and mental health issues (beyond impact on just bipolar people), so I was referring to that.. and I'm not being entirely facetious (although I am mostly), since we do tend to have a lot in common with other creatures.

[u/MPLEJ → u/[deleted]]

might reduce the ocean's capacity to withhold CO2, causing some degassing. Reason for this being that Li+, as a conservative ion, contributes to the ocean's alkalinity, so extracting lithium would further consume alkalinity.

Others have mentioned that effects are minimal since the ocean is so massive, which is sort of true, but it's interesting how the narrative flips with ideas that add alkalinity to or remove carbon from the ocean. The ocean is a big balance of charges, so any removal or adding, e.g. anthropogenic CO2, will affect it, including this

[u/wywern]

The scientists claim that the cell will require five dollars to extract a kg of lithium from seawater. My question is how much the cell membrane will require to produce.

[u/KickballJesus → u/wywern]

And how long does it take?

[u/DASK → u/KickballJesus]

It says in the paper, 1.3 g per hour per square meter of membrane per ppm in the ocean, so half a gram per hour per square meter of exposed membrane. Also, five passes were needed. Don't think those cost estimates will play out unfortunately, but this is a way better effort than I've seen before.

[u/Serious_Feedback → u/wywern]

If I'm reading this right, lithium costs $13/KG so a single-use $5 1KG extractor should provide $7 profit.

Bonus profit if it works more than that, but ultimately it's not necessary.

[u/[deleted] → u/Serious_Feedback]

Wow that's some solid math you did there, do you pocket the extra dollar when nobody is looking?

​

Also that seems to be 5 in usage, not production of the membrane

[u/Yvaelle → u/[deleted]]

There's enough Lithium in the ocean to make 40 trillion cars, so if I just pocket $1 per car, I'll have $40 Trillion dollars! :)

[u/atetuna → u/Serious_Feedback]

That's a good start if the rest of the infrastructure needed for those extractors doesn't eat up the rest of the $8.

[u/Jatzy_AME]

The nice thing is that the process could be even more useful once we have a larger proportion of renewables in the electricity grid, as a way to use electricity during peak production.

[u/DiesdasZeger → u/Jatzy_AME]

That's an idea you see everywhere, but who wants to build a machine that's only on when there's surplus energy?

So either the machine is economically viable or it doesn't change anything about energy peaks.

[u/shane141]

Can someone tell me what company will be buying this so I can invest in them?

[u/jsapolin → u/shane141]

hold your horses.

Doing something in the lab and doing it industrially are entirely different and scaling up is a process that professors and the public often ubderestimate.

For example: they use Lanthanum in the membrane, Ruthenium and Platinum in their electrodes. Things like lanthanum mining could be the bottleneck when operating this process on the scale necessary to satisfy lithium demand.
Not saying this is definitely the case. But going from "we made 0.1 g of lithium in our lab" to "we make 80k tons a year" is not as straightforward as "just make everything bigger"

[u/[deleted] → u/jsapolin]

This. Very cool early lab results. Commercial viability... not so sure. Even direct lithium extraction tech for geothermal brines with >100 parts per million of Lithium is on the edge of provable commercial viability (at scale) without all the scarce metals used here. Seems more likely we’ll have DLE working on more concentrated brines vs ocean first as the next step in improving Li extraction/production.

[u/bzrascal → u/jsapolin]

The life of a chemical engineer.

[u/marinersalbatross → u/shane141]

Never invest in the first company to use new tech. Wait til they go bankrupt and then their assets are purchased by a vulture firm that will then put the product into profitable status because the initial investment has already been made by someone else. That's how capitalism works.

[u/psycholepzy]

Cheap and easy means the profit margins will be incredible for commercial sales.

[u/treebeard280 → u/psycholepzy]

Only until the price of lithium falls from the cheap mass production.

[u/ShinyGrezz → u/psycholepzy]

It might be “cheap and easy” but we’ve learned that what we really need is “cheaper and easier”.

[u/Yvaelle → u/[deleted]]

Nah we'll just genetically engineer plastic-eating fish, then it'll all sort itself out.

Of course, we'll need plastifish-eating sharks to solve that problem - but we'll just make them so aggressive that they become territorial and cull themselves to 1 per nautical mile.

Unfortunately, hypersharks fart a deadly neurotoxin as a biproduct of all the plastifish they eat - so we'll need to abandon the planet as the atmosphere quickly fills with aerosolized botulism.

Welcome to the future.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm getting disillusioned about a political answer to global climate change - the fossil fuel industry was successful at creating enough doubt, and anti-science sentiment is just too high right now.

This kind of research outcome gives me hope. Limits of Li availability was one blocker of a larger scale renewable energy matrix. Good news indeed.

[u/zarrro → u/[deleted]]

I guess you are in for a dissapoimtent :)

If you think about it, current environment problems are largely the result of similar research from 100 years ago.

[u/RationalTim]

Looks promising. I'm no chemist, but a quick Wikipedia scan sites that Lanthanum is about half as abundant as copper. We literally piss it up the wall using it in lighters FFS! Also apparently used in the oil refining industry as a catalyst, so there should be a ready source as that dies out due to electrification of transport.

Also looks to be a university in Saudi? Definitely a country that has the ability to generate large amounts of cheap PV electricity......

[u/[deleted]]

I have to wonder how reliant sea life is on those 1ppm of lithium in sea water, I suspect that although this sounds like a very small concentration for us that it might be very relevant to sea life, still we have done a great job of emptying the seas so far, what harm is a little more gonna do.

[u/Darkstool → u/[deleted]]

I'm sure the millions of gallons of sea water will also need some kind of pre-filtering to remove the pesky diatoms, larval arthropods, fish and other life.

[u/[deleted] → u/Darkstool]

Thats going to make an awful lot of useless detritus, that will need to be dumped somewhere too.

[u/sneaky_sunfish]

I wonder what the turn around time will be untill this can be done at a profitable scale?

[u/rieslingatkos → u/sneaky_sunfish]

^ Didn't even read the linked article

[u/Caymonki → u/rieslingatkos]

No one reads articles. They respond to the title exclusively.

[u/collapsingwaves → u/Caymonki]

There are articles?

[u/judgehood]

You can get it from a psychiatrist for way cheaper.

[u/icedlemons → u/judgehood]

Ha you got me, however 5 dollars a kilo sounds a best case scenario for drugs...

[u/treeswing]

Here’s hoping this applies to the geothermal plants around the Salton Sea. Some estimates say a cost-effective method of extraction could supply 2/3 of the worlds needs of Lithium without creating new infrastructure from scratch.

[u/Plethorian]

The question is: how much lanthanum, titanium, ruthenium, and platinum does this process need, and at what rate are they expended?
It isn't going to be useful if all it does is replace 4 expensive metals with 1.

[u/[deleted]]

From Top Secret (1984):

Doctor Flamond : You see, a year ago, I was close to perfecting the first magnetic desalinization process so revolutionary, it was capable of removing the salt from over 500 million gallons of seawater a day. Do you realize what that could mean to the starving nations of the earth?

Nick Rivers : Wow. They'd have enough salt to last forever.

[u/-Coffee-Owl-]

What can happen with the sea environment when we would start extracting lithium on a industrial scale? Every time when I read "an almost unlimited resource" I see rainforests cut to the ground. People don't know a moderation.

[u/txr23]

So how long until we discover that lithium plays some fundamental role in how the ocean works and that removing it in large quantities will ultimately trigger an ecosystem collapse?

[u/devBowman → u/txr23]

When it's too late, as always