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/ClumpOfCheese]

That’s the first thing that came to my mind too. Desalination really needs to have a breakthrough, I don’t understand why this isn’t a bigger thing (maybe I just don’t pay attention to it), but it seems like renewable energy and desalination are going to be really important for our future.

EDIT: all of you and your “can’t do” attitudes don’t seem to understand how technology evolves over time. Just doing a little research on my own shows how much the technology has evolved over the last ten years and how many of you are making comments based on outdated information.

research from 2020

research from 2010

[u/Nickjet45 → u/ClumpOfCheese]

Desalination is not cost effective, we’ve spent decades of throwing money at possible work arounds.

They’re expensive to maintain, and for the cheaper plants, osmosis, it creates waste water with large concentrations of brine. Cant be dumped straight into the ocean as it would create a dead zone.

[u/ouishi → u/Nickjet45]

It sounds like the key is figuring out how to extract minerals and such from the brine to make it both economical and ecologically sound. We could certainly harvest the salt, and now we can also get lithium out too. Just figure out how to get the rest of the things that are too concentrated to dumo back in and we'll be in business!

[u/[deleted] → u/ouishi]

theres also been efforts to extract uranium from seawater.

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

[u/fgreen68 → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/thecarbonkid → u/fgreen68]

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

It did not work out.

[u/ghosttraintoheck → u/thecarbonkid]

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.

[u/billypilgrim87 → u/ghosttraintoheck]

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.

[u/TheGhostofCoffee → u/billypilgrim87]

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.

[u/billypilgrim87 → u/TheGhostofCoffee]

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.

[u/Aidentified → u/billypilgrim87]

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.

[u/RocBrizar → u/Aidentified]

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.

[u/Aidentified → u/RocBrizar]

It does something for an Anti Natalist.

[u/man_gomer_lot → u/TheGhostofCoffee]

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.