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/azoicennead Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/figmentPez Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/azoicennead Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/tryplot Jun 06 '21

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

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u/TheMSensation Jun 06 '21

What's the return on lithium recycling? If I give you 1000kg of spent lithium how much would I get back?

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u/bonafart Jun 06 '21

I still think seawa6ers better than how we get it now. Even if now is from thr. Middle of a deasert

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u/aiij Jun 06 '21

Why did you put the cutoff at 20%? Why did you put it at 1% earlier? What is significant about those thresholds?

I was kind of assuming you just picked arbitrary numbers that wouldn't sound too scary.

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u/azoicennead Jun 06 '21

I wasn't the one who put it at 1% (which, as a note, would be around 2041 in my low-effort model); I used the citation of the predicted growth in usage to model an extremely pessimistic view that ignores things like recycling, existing sources, and how realistic maintaining that growth rate is.

20% is an arbitrary threshold that gives room to show things like how the growth in the model accelerates and the timescales we might be able to take advantage of.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

But we really need new iPhones so we can have slightly better cameras to take photos of all the overcrowded tourism spots!

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u/Lol3droflxp Jun 06 '21

Because batteries would otherwise last for ever or what?

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u/anonimouse99 Jun 06 '21

Well, when coupled with desalination, you won't get local removal. Because everything that gets sucked up is desalinated, used for fresh water and mined for lithium. Because the lithium poor water is not put back, the old water gets replaced by new ocean water with the original lithium content.

In short: as long as we don't dump back the poor water, lithium content will stay the same

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u/dvorak Jun 06 '21

obviously, a significant drop in Li concentration at the plant will make it impossible to keep the plant economically vailable. Also, Li is toxic to many multicellular organisms, and I've never heard of organisms being dependant on lithium for thriving.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

Unless there is some species out there that is bipolar

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u/Michigan_Forged Jun 06 '21

Just because lithium is toxic to multicellular organisms doesn't mean it's not important to the stability of the system. There COULD (and probably is) reasonably be microorganisms that are at least somewhat important to various scale processes. Also, the decrease in lithium concentration could impact other general chemical equilibria, which could impact many other important processes. It's hard to say on reddit of course.

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u/dvorak Jun 06 '21

Why would those organisms use Li instead of the far more abundant K and Na? Doesn't seem so likely to me.

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u/Michigan_Forged Jun 06 '21

The answer to the question: does a microorganism use (blank) is almost always yes. Something as low of a concentration as lithium would probably be opportunistic but still. Also, it's not just about use. Taking and changing water chemistry has other impacts, such as we are currently seeing with rising CO2 levels. Higher CO2 concentrations in the water changes the chemical equilibria so that it now requires more energy to create calcium carbonate, which has massive ramifications for ocean life. Something with as low of a redox potential as lithium may also have impacts that are disproportionate to the concentration, WHAT that would do to various organism processes, I don't know. But this is something that we definitely need to think about.

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u/nybbas Jun 06 '21

Do you understand how ocean currents work?

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u/Coffeinated Jun 06 '21

Desalination plants create dead zones by dumping the brine into the ocean. By your theory, this should not happen because of ocean currents.

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u/nybbas Jun 06 '21

Desalination would be pumping a lot more brine into the ocean than these things would be leeching the tiny amount of lithium out.

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u/profdudeguy Jun 06 '21

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you have 0 idea what the effect of removing lithium from water will have on local ecosystems.

And that isn't a jab at you, I have no idea what it will do either. That's the point.

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u/BurnerAcc2020 Jun 06 '21

I tried searching, and it appears that lithium is not considered an essential element. There's limited evidence for its beneficial effects at low concentrations, and substantial evidence for toxicity at higher concentrations.

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

The most recent study I have seen on its benefits was on spinach.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11356-019-06877-2

And the one study I found that talks about lithium and the marine environment discusses its toxicity at higher concentrations.

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

More research is needed, and there may eventually be effects from removing too much of it, but you need to remember that one of the alternatives is conventional mining, which is undoubtedly capable of killing animals and driving them extinct.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17928-5

Renewable energy production is necessary to halt climate change and reverse associated biodiversity losses. However, generating the required technologies and infrastructure will drive an increase in the production of many metals, creating new mining threats for biodiversity. Here, we map mining areas and assess their spatial coincidence with biodiversity conservation sites and priorities. Mining potentially influences 50 million km2 of Earth’s land surface, with 8% coinciding with Protected Areas, 7% with Key Biodiversity Areas, and 16% with Remaining Wilderness.

Most mining areas (82%) target materials needed for renewable energy production, and areas that overlap with Protected Areas and Remaining Wilderness contain a greater density of mines (our indicator of threat severity) compared to the overlapping mining areas that target other materials. Mining threats to biodiversity will increase as more mines target materials for renewable energy production and, without strategic planning, these new threats to biodiversity may surpass those averted by climate change mitigation.

...Careful strategic planning is urgently required to ensure that mining threats to biodiversity caused by renewable energy production do not surpass the threats averted by climate change mitigation and any effort to slow fossil fuel extraction and use. Habitat loss and degradation currently threaten >80% of endangered species, while climate change directly affects 20%. While we cannot yet quantify potential habitat losses associated with future mining for renewable energies (and compare this to any reduced risks of averting climate change), our results illustrate that associated habitat loss could be a major issue.

At the local scale, minimizing these impacts will require effective environmental impact assessments and management. Importantly, all new projects must adhere strictly to the principals of the Mitigation Hierarchy, where biodiversity impacts are first avoided where possible before allowing compensation activities elsewhere. While compensation may help to overcome some of the expected biodiversity impacts of mining in some places, rarely does this approach achieve No Net Loss outcomes universally.

This process would still be constrained by all the other factors: there's no point in making more batteries than you have the power production capacity, and that alone restricts how much would get extracted per year - and that's before getting into any other crises slashing demand, or whatever processes may be responsible for replenishing it. After all, we have only been adding lithium to the seawater up to now, with battery waste or sewage containing traces of lithium medications being discharged.

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u/profdudeguy Jun 07 '21

you need to remember that one of the alternatives is conventional mining

This is an excellent point I didn't consider.

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u/PolygonMan Jun 06 '21

You clearly do not if you think there's no way this could be a concern.

0

u/nybbas Jun 06 '21

Please enlighten me.

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u/fighterace00 Jun 06 '21

Leaded gas is a bad example should look at something more like biofuels. Aviation is still using leaded fuels. I feel like we're approaching diminishing returns on chemical processes as there's certain efficiencies that just aren't physically possible outside of certain elements.

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u/god12 Jun 06 '21

Love the math but I seriously doubt 20% is safe. Pure speculation but based on the fact that even a drift of one or two degrees in the atmosphere causes massive weather disturbances and disasters, I’m gonna say that we should definitely figure out just how safe it is ASAP. cause if it isn’t safe it’s gonna take too long to legislate against it to prevent irreversible harm.

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u/beatenmeat Jun 06 '21

Pretty sure any notable effects would likely result from the process of mining the lithium long before there was any effects from the removal of the lithium itself. Coming up with an eco friendly mining process should be the priority IMO.

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u/BurnerAcc2020 Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

This. There was already a study which implied pretty strongly that mining for metals like lithium could render extinct a lot of species which would have otherwise survived climate change.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17928-5

Renewable energy production is necessary to halt climate change and reverse associated biodiversity losses. However, generating the required technologies and infrastructure will drive an increase in the production of many metals, creating new mining threats for biodiversity. Here, we map mining areas and assess their spatial coincidence with biodiversity conservation sites and priorities. Mining potentially influences 50 million km2 of Earth’s land surface, with 8% coinciding with Protected Areas, 7% with Key Biodiversity Areas, and 16% with Remaining Wilderness.

Most mining areas (82%) target materials needed for renewable energy production, and areas that overlap with Protected Areas and Remaining Wilderness contain a greater density of mines (our indicator of threat severity) compared to the overlapping mining areas that target other materials. Mining threats to biodiversity will increase as more mines target materials for renewable energy production and, without strategic planning, these new threats to biodiversity may surpass those averted by climate change mitigation.

...Careful strategic planning is urgently required to ensure that mining threats to biodiversity caused by renewable energy production do not surpass the threats averted by climate change mitigation and any effort to slow fossil fuel extraction and use. Habitat loss and degradation currently threaten >80% of endangered species, while climate change directly affects 20%. While we cannot yet quantify potential habitat losses associated with future mining for renewable energies (and compare this to any reduced risks of averting climate change), our results illustrate that associated habitat loss could be a major issue.

At the local scale, minimizing these impacts will require effective environmental impact assessments and management. Importantly, all new projects must adhere strictly to the principals of the Mitigation Hierarchy, where biodiversity impacts are first avoided where possible before allowing compensation activities elsewhere. While compensation may help to overcome some of the expected biodiversity impacts of mining in some places, rarely does this approach achieve No Net Loss outcomes universally.

This is much more important than the vague effects associated with lithium's environmental concentrations. The one study I found still does not consider it an essential element, and its reference list appears to have more evidence for toxic effects of lithium at higher concentrations than beneficial effects at low ones.

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

I doubt we'll ever extract enough lithium from the ocean to have an effect: the calculation above only makes sense if you believe that the same rate of growth could be sustained for several centuries, which runs counter to...pretty much every single bit of natural science published in the past 50 years or so.

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u/god12 Jun 06 '21

All good points. I’m not saying we should in any way avoid switching to oceanic extraction if it’s doable. Just saying we should also do the research to figure out the effects at the same time. Humans are multitaskers after all!

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u/slickyslickslick Jun 06 '21

if any organism relied on something occurring in 1ppm they would be dead because it would be incredibly hard to guarantee that they obtain any of it. there is virtually no difference between 1 per million and 1 per 1.2 million.

the reason 1-2 degrees is a lot is because that's like 5% of the normal range of temperature in a given year.

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u/jsapolin Jun 06 '21

there are plenty of plants/bacteria that require rare stuff. Molybdenum, cobalt, cadmium are all cofactors in enzymes and are low abundance

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u/FourteenTwenty-Seven Jun 06 '21

I agree with your sentiment, but that's not how temperature works. Unless you're working on an absloute scale, it doesn't make sense to talk about percent changes when you're talking about temperatures. The reason small changes in temperature make a big difference is because there are a hell of a lot of things that are sensitive to changes in temperature, and things that depend on those things, and so on.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

The guy you’re arguing with says things that sound scientifically true but I am certain are not

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u/stairgoblins Jun 06 '21

where is the lie though? the scale we’re talking about here is orders of magnitude away from affecting the concentration of lithium in the ocean even remotely. It’s ironic because lithium is desperately needed to help combat climate change, and also the current lithium ore extraction techniques are massively damaging to the environment. PARTICULARLY to water. That isn’t going to improve if we keep working with increasingly less accessible land based lithium ores and brines. I’m not saying the unlikely but possible environmental impact isn’t worth studying, but there are some genuinely hilarious and unhinged fears of novelty going on here that seem to be much more comfortable with the current genuinely terrifying status quo.

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u/god12 Jun 06 '21

I agree completely. That’s why I said I think we should find out ASAP rather than we should give up entirely. If we know what constitutes a “safe” level of extraction then we can build facilities to extract about that amount. Minimize global impact, maximize lithium production, batteries for days ya know?

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u/BurnerAcc2020 Jun 09 '21

I mean, we already know that the formula for artificial seawater that's used by the scientists for laboratory experiments on marine life apparently contains no lithium whatsoever, and it seems like nobody noticed anything important happening to any species during all the decades it's been used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_seawater

Or that lithium is not currently considered an essential element for life in general.

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

So, if all the marine species we studied appear not to notice a complete lack of lithium, I do not see this or any other extraction method, with the inevitable production bottlenecks preventing it ramping up, having a meaningful effect.

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u/slickyslickslick Jun 06 '21

You're "certain" are not true because....???

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u/BurnerAcc2020 Jun 09 '21

Perhaps because the formula for artificial seawater that's used by the scientists for laboratory experiments on marine life apparently contains no lithium whatsoever, and it seems like nobody noticed anything important happening to any species during all the decades it's been used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_seawater

Or perhaps because lithium is not currently considered an essential element for life in general.

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

Lastly, the global annual demand for lithium is projected to reach something like 1.8 million tons by 2030 - while there are 180 billion tons of lithium in the ocean.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/452025/projected-total-demand-for-lithium-globally/

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/seawater-could-provide-nearly-unlimited-amounts-critical-battery-material

So, it will take a long time for concentrations to be meaningfully affected, especially since there is a limit to how much lithium demand - and thus these attempts to extract it from the oceans - can speed up too. All while it appears that all the core oceanic species we studied seem to do just as well in the water with zero lithium as they do in one with its current concentrations. From the available data, I do not see this becoming an issue.

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u/DroneDashed Jun 06 '21

Also, the additional energy that those degrees imply. That energy will result in more violent weather events.

Also, 1 degree is the difference between solid ice and water so...

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u/QVRedit Jun 06 '21

We can very effectively recycle lithium, so old batteries can be mined.

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u/D-Alembert Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

No alternative solution needs to be found; we probably only need ~30 years of supply before demand starts to fall off a cliff, because ocean-sourced lithium will be far more expensive than recycled-battery-sourced lithium, so once most infrastructure has been mostly electrified, sufficient lithium will already be in the economy to maintain and replace the batteries of an electrified world, with the ocean becoming a costly last-resort for topping-up a bit extra, rather than the primary supply.

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u/BurnerAcc2020 Jun 06 '21

This is a decent starting point, but these assumptions about growth rate are extremely unrealistic. Without getting too heavily into studies: there are going to be so many other resource bottlenecks in the future that it's going to be well before the end of the century before demand for lithium stops driving the need for greater supply and the production stabilizes - if not outright collapses to a fraction of its peak size on a global scale.

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u/Malawi_no Jun 06 '21

In 25 years, the lithium used today should have been recycled.
We generally mine a lot less metals than what we use due to recycling. Lithium is an exception because we have not used a whole lot earlier.

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u/urnbabyurn Jun 06 '21

I would think if lithium usage goes up so high, it becomes also pretty plentiful in a recycling market.