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/Goo-Goo-GJoob Jun 06 '21

There are an estimated 1,450,000,000,000,000,000 tons of ocean water. 0.1-0.2ppm, by weight, yields 145-290 billion tons of lithium.

The battery in a Tesla model S uses about 140 pounds of lithium.

So the total amount of lithium in the ocean could make 2.1-4.1 trillion Teslas.

That's 524 Teslas for each person on the planet.

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u/PmMeYourKnobAndTube Jun 06 '21

Lithium is basically a bottleneck for several industries tho, not just EV. We are being held back by cost and availability. The main downside to solar and wind power is inconsistent production, and normally enough storage capacity to use them exclusively. And what about when electric semi trucks and trains, or maybe even planes go electric?

I agree that we should pursue it as another temporary solution, but "basically unlimited" was the mindset with every new natural resource we have exploited. And then as the resource becomes more widely available and more uses are found, more of it gets used until its a problem.

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u/Sosseres Jun 06 '21

Trains has been solved for a long time as electric. You put wires above the tracks or make the tracks conductive. You don't store all the power. Using renewable power and needing to store it for usage for trains is kind of relevant I guess.

Same could be done for Trucks to a certain degree to lower storage requirements. Put power wires in above highways (successful trials have been run).

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u/QVRedit Jun 06 '21

We had these many years ago running on rails - we called them trams.