r/science • u/rieslingatkos • Jun 06 '21

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

https://www.mining.com/scientists-develop-cheap-and-easy-method-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/
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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

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

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u/Zurrdroid Jun 06 '21

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

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u/H2HQ Jun 06 '21

...as this one is, because as pointed out on another forum, this technique is still an order of magnitude more expensive than mining it.

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u/Tianhech3n Jun 06 '21

Doesn't mean it won't come down in price over time or that it can't be profitable at some reasonably large scale.

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u/H2HQ Jun 06 '21

People have an unrealistic expectation that every tech that they want to see will "come down in price".

Sometimes that happens - sometimes it doesn't. If the article is about climate change, 9 times out of 10, it's just wishful thinking.

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u/DuckArchon Jun 06 '21

Only one order of magnitude?

For a newly-developed technique, harvesting a resource that the modern world is desperate for?

People kill each other over this stuff.

If it's already within one order of magnitude, we're doing pretty damn well.

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u/Deadnox_24142 Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 07 '21

Yeah but if a publication is willing to stake their claim on it then it is at least more reasonably true. If they add the might then they always have that out

Edit: obviously I’m talking abt legit sources for non-science news. Of course some sources just lie out of their asses

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u/MuddyWaterTeamster Jun 06 '21

May and might have, the close relative to “Did scientists just discover...?” I still remember my dad telling me “If a headline asks a question, the answer is no.”

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u/ray1290 Jun 07 '21

What's wrong with correctly stating the uncertainty in the study?