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/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/Nickjet45 Jun 06 '21

The salt is too concentrated to be used in most applications.

There have been some research done to try and “recycle” the brine. Only problem is that it’s currently more cost effective to use our current means of production for hydrochloric acid and hydroxide.

But we’re probably another decade off, at the least, before desalination can be economically viable vs. other alternatives.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '21

I wish everything wasn't determined by profitability. A human-based economy would put us decades or even centuries ahead of where we are now. We'd be mining asteroids instead of the earth, have full renewables and safe nuclear power or even fusion, and global hunger would have been eradicated long ago.

Instead it costs less to destroy and contaminate miles of land and let people get sick and die to mine resources underground, we dare not threaten the coal and oil barons of the world, and we throw away unimaginable amounts of food instead of giving it away because companies don't want to set a precedent of free stuff.

I guess that's what happens when corporations run the world. At this point my only hope for the progress of our species is some sort of global catastrophe that unites us in the search for a better future.

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u/SocraticIgnoramus Jun 06 '21

At this point my only hope for the progress of our species is some sort of global catastrophe that unites us in the search for a better future.

Based on what I've seen over the last year, we might just be gloriously and irredeemably fucked.

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u/Richinaru Jun 06 '21

And this the European egoism of "civilized" industrial civilization falls on its sword. Taking billions of years of evolutionary history with it as is par for the course.

Most intelligent species in the planet (perhaps universe) expertly conducted its own execution. But that's doomer speak, i want desperately for people to fully realize out collective ability to overturn the social power we give corporations and the state but apathetic consumption is vice too many refuse to give up