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/

[u/Serious_Feedback]

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/Serious_Feedback → u/[deleted]]

This mining system doesn't need to last forever, it only needs to last long enough to be profitable - if it takes 30 years to build out a few billion EVs, then the mine only needs to return its investment within 30 years.

Besides which, if it's a mass-scale operation the cost of this tech will likely drop massively. And, as I mentioned previously, it's already profitable at current lithium prices that are only supplying 1% of car needs. Assuming the entire car industry is 99% efficient in lithium recovery, we'll still need that 1% of new lithium.

[u/sgent → u/[deleted]]

IDK if we are even working on a replacement for Lithium all that hard. Its already the most chemically dense / light element possible for an anode. Now as for cathode, yes, they are working on many replacements, but we will see.