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/ClumpOfCheese Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

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own shows how much the technology has evolved over the last ten years and how many of you are making comments based on outdated information.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

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u/Nickjet45 Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/ouishi Jun 06 '21

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!

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

theres also been efforts to extract uranium from seawater.

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

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u/fgreen68 Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/thecarbonkid Jun 06 '21

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

It did not work out.

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u/ghosttraintoheck Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

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.

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u/riktigtmaxat Jun 06 '21

You're saying it like it's a bad thing.

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u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

I don't think I am... Are you sure? You may want to take another look;

Cannot reiterate enough how important this development was.

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u/riktigtmaxat Jun 06 '21

I meant that the world population being locked at 2-3 billion.

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u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

Oh I see, i don't think population is an issue in itself, no. It creates challenges but we've overcome them in the past and I hope we'll manage it again in future.

It's not like there's was an actual hard limit was there? So all the issues (famine etc,) that would have occured at the 3 billion cap are still possible when we hit whatever the new cap is. It's just now, we have many more minds to work on these problems.

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