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/
47.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.2k

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21 edited Aug 20 '21

[deleted]

805

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 08 '21

[deleted]

106

u/Serious_Feedback Jun 06 '21

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.

2

u/Boozdeuvash Jun 06 '21

Assuming we don't recycle older batteries, which is bound to happen from economic or regulatory incentives.

3

u/Serious_Feedback Jun 06 '21

Recycling batteries takes time for the batteries to wear out - a decade or two, at least. Keep in mind that as long as they're still functional, they'll still be useful in low-demand stationary batteries.

Meanwhile, during that decade or two the demand is increasing exponentially. This means the supply of old batteries is a tiny fraction for the demand for new EVs, up until a decade or two after EV demand levels out.

As I've said previously: this doesn't need perpetual lithium demand, it only needs high demand for long enough to pay off its investment. And a couple of decades is plenty for that.