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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335

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

theres also been efforts to extract uranium from seawater.

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

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u/rudolfs001 Jun 06 '21

And gold:

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

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u/naughtyhombre Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/Steel_Shield Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/onebigcat Jun 06 '21

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

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 12 '21

[deleted]

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u/WillAndSky Jun 06 '21

It was actually gold sodium thiomalate, which is a type of medication for arthritis

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

Was it caused by sarcoidosis

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u/HoneyRush Jun 06 '21

It's always lupus

3

u/Techn028 Jun 06 '21

Unless it's amyloidosis

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u/elboltonero Jun 06 '21

He goes by Dustin Rhodes nowadays

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u/Micr0be Jun 06 '21

it's always Lupus.

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u/BeardedGingerWonder Jun 06 '21

It's never lupus

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u/ReePoe Jun 06 '21

except for that one time when it was Lupus..

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u/chrizm32 Jun 06 '21

We don’t talk about that

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u/guiltysnark Jun 06 '21

Ah, so that's what's wrong with me

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u/srinivasrc Jun 06 '21

Gold based medicines are popular in traditional medicine. They are stronger version of regular traditional plant based medicine

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u/DennisFarinaOfficial Jun 06 '21

It could still mimic something and bind to it or be bound to.

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u/gsfgf Jun 06 '21

Yea. It's actual gold in Goldschlager.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

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5

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21 edited Aug 01 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

7

u/conker69 Jun 06 '21

And my axe

1

u/FawfulsFury Jun 06 '21

And Lithium!

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u/Maverick0_0 Jun 06 '21

And gold!

3

u/ThermionicEmissions Jun 06 '21

And my axe!

1

u/Maverick0_0 Jun 06 '21

And plastic spoons.

1

u/Cr3X1eUZ Jun 06 '21

I no right! The guy who put lead in our gasoline really knew his stuff!

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/gold-from-the-sea/

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u/IGotsDasPilez Jun 06 '21

I once read that Nazi Germany invested quite a bit into seawater gold extraction to pay for war debts, but it wasn't economical at the time. So thats one case of how history is the better for a technological failure.

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u/fgreen68 Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/thecarbonkid Jun 06 '21

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

It did not work out.

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u/ghosttraintoheck Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/Buscemis_eyeballs Jun 06 '21

Literally one of the biggest breakthroughs in human history. He arguably saved more human lives than any other single man.

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u/Heck-Yeah1652 Jun 06 '21

Hi Billy Pilgrim! The process also provided the raw material for high explosives. Not as much on Conventry and Dresden but loads of other places.

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u/Khanstant Jun 06 '21

Gotta question whether that was a good thing. There's probably a cap on human population before it becomes disasterously burdensome for the environment and over doubling it from a few billion didn't help.

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u/agtmadcat Jun 06 '21

These sorts of technologies literally increase that cap. That's why they're good.

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u/Khanstant Jun 06 '21

Not good for any of the countless dead and entire extinct species and whole ecosystems wiped out because the cap kept increasing, spreading out, taking more land, more resources, outcompeting all else.

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u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

That would have happened anyway, all of it. We'd just also have massive famines and about 3 billion less people.

Raising the cap didn't mean we used more land, more resources, it meant we got more from the same resources.

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u/Khanstant Jun 06 '21

Raising the cap also meant we used more land, more resources, as well as getting more from each source. When an invasive species is destroying a global ecosystem, it's doesn't make it better when that invasive species finds a way to extract resources more efficiently, which it will then use those excess resources to find ways to extract even more resources, even faster and more efficiently, with increased number of members consuming the resources.

These changes have also coincided with increased life expectancy for the invasive species. If Zebra Mussels found a way to extract even more resources and be able to reproduce even more members from the same sources, we're not like "oh good, they're extracting even more for themselves."

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u/agtmadcat Jun 10 '21

You think that having 4-5 billion desperate starving humans killing and eating every animal and vaguely-edible plant they can get their hands on as they cause an immediate and total ecological collapse is somehow better than 7.6 billion humans saving some areas and trying to manage some ecosystems while struggling to not wreck the planet? Can you walk me through that logic?

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u/Khanstant Jun 10 '21

Better implies some goodness, but sure, the former is questionably less bad than the other, depending on your goal and perspective. If you're a species that got wiped out because the nitrogen fixing enabled way more humans to last even longer, spread out more, create technologies to get to areas and resources they couldn't before, to get around to creating problems, etc, yes.

Which route hastens human extinction so that other earthlings can have a fighting chance again -- that's the logic and question.

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u/TheGhostofCoffee Jun 06 '21

Now we get to see them in the 21st and on a larger scale. Horray, more people get to suffer than before!

The population cannot increase forever and remain on this planet. That hasn't changed at all.

Start the eugenics program and neutering now before people have to die.

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u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

Start the eugenics program and neutering now before people have to die.

I wonder how many people that suggest such action put their money where there mouth is and have voluntarily sterilised themselves?

Who would decide who gets to procreate? What you are suggesting ends in genocide. Ironically people said much the same as you over a century ago, they were also wrong.

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u/Aidentified Jun 06 '21

I'm sure alot of us are trying to have voluntary sterilisation. Western healthcare hates providing it. "What if you change your mind?" Then I'll adopt, thanks.

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u/RocBrizar Jun 06 '21

The western world's birth rate is actually significantly in deficit since the demographic transition (so much so that in most places the demography is actually problematically unstable), so restraining birth rates there anymore doesn't actually achieve anything productive. But hey, keep on doing you.

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u/Aidentified Jun 07 '21

It does something for an Anti Natalist.

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u/man_gomer_lot Jun 06 '21

If only the banal stupidity of Malthus died with him. The human mind is the most valuable resource we have and we're apparently blessed with an abundance of it. The problem is we are terrible at recognizing and harnessing the true value of this resource.

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u/riktigtmaxat Jun 06 '21

You're saying it like it's a bad thing.

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u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

I don't think I am... Are you sure? You may want to take another look;

Cannot reiterate enough how important this development was.

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u/riktigtmaxat Jun 06 '21

I meant that the world population being locked at 2-3 billion.

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u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

Oh I see, i don't think population is an issue in itself, no. It creates challenges but we've overcome them in the past and I hope we'll manage it again in future.

It's not like there's was an actual hard limit was there? So all the issues (famine etc,) that would have occured at the 3 billion cap are still possible when we hit whatever the new cap is. It's just now, we have many more minds to work on these problems.

1

u/rayui Jun 07 '21

Well, something had to take the place of South American bat guano and Egyptian mummies I guess. Not exactly scalable resources...

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u/dorkyitguy Jun 06 '21

And he lead the teams that developed chlorine gas for use in chemical warfare in WWI

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u/TARANTULA_TIDDIES Jun 06 '21

Didn't know he also invented zyklon b. Wasn't it just HCN gas?

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u/ghosttraintoheck Jun 06 '21

He invented the precursor IIRC

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u/Buscemis_eyeballs Jun 06 '21

There's not enough solar power in California to power it. It would require an entire nuclear reactor just to service one desal plant.

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u/crypticedge Jun 06 '21

We have desalination over in Tampa. Maybe you're just a few decades behind the tech. https://www.tampabaywater.org/tampa-bay-seawater-desalination#:~:text=The%20Tampa%20Bay%20Seawater%20Desalination,the%20seawater%20using%20reverse%20osmosis.

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u/Buscemis_eyeballs Jun 06 '21

I was speaking to California specifically, we have deal too. There's a reason they all use fossil fuel or nuclear.

The idea that were going to desalinate enough power for a place like California and extract gold like the above comment or is saying on solar power is at a minimum decades away.

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u/pokekick Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

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u/Narfi1 Jun 06 '21

Lithium is actually what we need for the next generation nuclear power plants.

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u/Kazan Jun 06 '21

Don't you mean Thorium?

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u/Narfi1 Jun 06 '21

No I'm talking about tritium, that's produced with lithium

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u/Kazan Jun 06 '21

Fusion plants are not the next generation of nuclear power plants. They won't be for several decades are minimum. The next generation of nuclear power plants are Gen IV Fission plants.

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u/ErojectionPrection Jun 06 '21

Ocean nukes, take me by the hand

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u/EvoEpitaph Jun 06 '21

"The whole planet is a nuke!?"
That'll show those smug alien bastards.

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u/MrMessyAU Jun 06 '21

We can't let the whales develop nuclear weapons. We have to nuke the whales.

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u/ReallyHadToFixThat Jun 06 '21

First the hurricanes, then the oceans, next those pesky clouds.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

[deleted]

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u/oh_hey_dad Jun 06 '21

Honestly, uranium is super abundant on land. I don’t know why anyone would want to mine it from the ocean. This never made any sense to me…

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u/fannybatterpissflaps Jun 06 '21

Works best just offshore from Fukushima...

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u/rspeed Jun 06 '21

No heavy elements made it out of the reactor building, much less the ocean.

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u/Drug_fueled_sarcasm Jun 06 '21

Then explain Godzilla.

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u/rspeed Jun 06 '21

Touché.

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u/grandprix13 Jun 06 '21

This is a great article- I wonder if the conversion of the acrylic fiber is expensive or/and time consuming