He hopes his plan will help end the reliance Europe has on China for lithium production.
China controls about nine tenths of the world’s lithium hydroxide supply and Europe will have dozens of battery-producing “gigafactories” by 2025 which will require more than 325,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide per year, his firm estimates.
“If at the end of the day, a lithium battery has come from China, the product is going to have a huge amount of embedded carbon in the production of it, which makes absolutely no sense if you use electric vehicles to decarbonise the transport industry, then have it full of materials with deeply embedded carbon,” he says.
The biggest lithium producer is Australia, mining almost half the world’s lithium in 2020, according to the US Geological Survey, while Chile, the second-biggest producer, has the largest reserves.
Forget Chile, entirely different process. This bloke is talking about processing spodumene concentrate, not lithium from brines.
At present, spodumene, the raw material mined for its lithium, is shipped to China for processing from mines in Australia and South America. What is loaded into ships is mainly byproduct, which means a lot of waste is shipped halfway around the world for little gain.
“If you’re going to ship lithium spodumene concentrate to China, you’re exporting 95pc waste on a ship,” says Atherley.
“The UK has got the opportunity to do it sustainably by using electrochemical methods, rather than traditional methods that the Chinese use and do it using offshore wind.”
So, in order to save transport costs he’s going to ship it from Oz to Britain, not Oz to China?
Err, yes?
His company wants miners to do some initial processing to get the percentage of lithium in their shipments from less than 10pc up to 40pc. It can then be transported to the UK and refined here.
Oh, and as well as that he wants a more inefficient system of processing? The reason this isn’t done already being that those spoke plants, which upgrade to 40%, aren’t efficient at the size of a mine. The whole reason for the concentration of spod concentrate processing being that the efficient size of a factory is one girt big ‘un.
Sigh.
Be easier just to get the stuff from those geothermal waters under Cornwall.
So Tim, obviously you aren’t offering investment advice, but there are a few investment ‘opportunities’ coming through in relation to Lithium mining in Cornwall.
Accepting that these are high risk strategies and most will fail with zero recovery, is the concept sufficiently sensible to warrant a small investment, do you think or is the concept fundamentally flawed?
I.e. even if the science is sound, is this likely to be a commercially viable proposition?
Very difficult to say as I’m not privy to any of the financial information. Really, I simply do not know.
What I can say. Cornish Lithium (which is not as yet public, so I’m safe saying this) is onto something. There is Li in those geothermal waters – this is cross checked by it being in other very similar geologies. It’s there.
It’s possible to extract it. Was having a chat – a result of something entirely different – with some uni folks in the US. Yes, if the Li is at 50 to 100 ppm – that’s an announced scientific number – then it’s possible to extract using known and understood membrane and the like technologies.
So, it’s there, it can be extracted. That’s a damn good start to any plan.
Now, whether it’s economic to do so, that’s the bit I don’t know.
As to my personal opinion? Well, be careful here. For I was right about Molycorp going bust many years before it did. It’s just the shares went from $12 (or whatever) to $70 before it did then go bust. So we might say that I was right but entirely useless as investment advice.
But that personal opinion is that there are many more lithium miners out there than the market will support when they all come on line. This is bolstered by the fact that there are miners who have recently gone bust (Altura for example) as a result of being financed in the last excitement, back in 2013 and the like.
Folk really, really, do not understand how damn much there is out there of any one mineral or element. So, I expect an Li price crash in ooooooh…. some indeterminate number of years. There’s a lot of money to be made between now and then but that’s something I’m not good at.
Thanks Tim!
Is there any element of subsidy farming in this? Even the most egregiously stupid plan could be a worthwhile investment in such a scenario.
Most certainly. Note the bit I said about me not being a good investment advisor tho’. The price between here and the end result is the bit I’m not good at.
Cornish Pasty, with any risky financial investment – only invest what you can afford to lose. Just like with gambling.
Is there any cobalt in Rwanda ? Is that why we are sending the Boat People down there ?
> spodumene
Is it transported in black footer bags?
Hell’s teeth!
The easiest solution is to abandon the milk float fantasy and remove the stupendous artificially increased demand.
“Is there any element of subsidy farming in this?”
Given that it’s unlikely to happen due to real world practicality of milk floats and “storage” for “renewables”, almost certainly. Question is, who is being fleeced, taxpayers or investors brainwashed into believing this is the future? Former almost certainly to some degree, which is never a surprise. Not sure about the latter, but the potential for my pension to be steered down this black hole worries me muchly
Here’s a question about batteries. There’s a lot of talk about storing surplus wind farm electricity in battery farms for load smoothing. Everybody seems to be talking lithium. Is there any reason lead/acid couldn’t be employed. We’re talking about static storage so weight/volume isn’t critical. It’s mature tech. Lead’s as cheap as chips & so’s H2SO4. Recycling both is easy. Scaling up from car batteries my arithmetic has energy density at around 45kW/m³ but you’d be working with big tanks, pumped electrolyte & plate arrays you’d drop in with cranes. Should be able to double that. Environmental containment shouldn’t be a problem. It’s no different from a chemical factory. So why not?
BIS with eco wankgabble, sexy and costly new stuff is much better than nasty stuff that actually works
It does occur, if the milk float dream materialises, there 25 million car batteries are going to need disposing of.
@Diogenes
I’ve done calculations for electricity storage for our off grid house where we could deploy solar/wind. I wouldn’t dream of going lithium. It’d be far too expensive & there’s no need for energy density. It’s electricity we’re short of, not space.
@Bloke in Spain
Of course! But if it stopped NOW, there will still be the thick end of half a million.
The used car market is getting to an interesting place. The first generation of hybrids is approaching the point where the batteries need fixing. There were about 70k hybrids on the road in the UK in 2017,so some of them are going to be about 8 years old.
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/choosing/road-to-electric/
When there’s a mining boom, invest in shovels.
@BiS Yes, it’s entirely possible to use lead-acid batteries for the purpose, and in fact… in places where size doesn’t matter (much) they are often used as they are cheaper and more reliable in the long run.
The reason they’re not touted as a Solution is that people know the economics and availability of lead-acid systems, and using those numbers the utter lunacy of the EcoFreaks’ plans immediately becomes apparent. Not enough lead in the world… And not enough acid.
At least not without some massive Despoiling of Nature at a scale that will ensure things will go Wonky.
A couple of peeps going “Off-Grid” using a couple of truck batteries is no problem. Entire nations? Ho-Hum…
BiS – some interesting stuff being done on sodium ion batteries, which could even kinda-sorta finally make solar and windmills practical. The purported benefits are:
* Cheaper than lithium
* Far less environmentally damaging than extracting lithium
* Work better at lower temperatures
* Longer lifespan
Energy density is lower too, but that’s not really a problem if we build big, fuck-off, static batteries and distribute them across the grid (next to the local substation?). I assume they’re probably flammable, but you can’t have everything.
Hard rock (spodumene) lithium mining has no great environmental impact, unlike brine. Also there is nowhere near enough of the stuff currently available to provide for the already announced number of electric vehicles, and it takes a large amount of time to create new mines, hence the massive price rise.
Gents,
The point is that the very idea of using batteries as a means of smoothing out the vagaries of an intermittent and diffuse energy source – turning it into reliable power – is the flaw and the question is why use such an unreliable energy source on such a scale in the first place. Where nature does the smoothing – hydro – it is used and pretty well always has been. Ditto where the vagaries don’t really matter or can’t be avoided: a windmill used to grind flour where it doesn’t matter if it stands idle for periods, an ocean going sailing ship.
All such schemes are willful deceit and the only thing they can store is problems!
Steve
The sodium is probably only a problem if it gets wet. Or is exposed to air. Chemistry lessons at school involving raw sodoum were always a larf.
@Otto it’s sodium ions.. Defs not metallic sodium.. 😛
Yeah.. the things work and are …relatively Green..
The thing is the capacity and max current is low, so you need to get fancy with linking/electronics and build them *BIG* to be of any use for large-scale deployment.
But you can build one using kitchen salt, vinegar, some scrap iron, and a plastic tub, no worries.
Mark – yes, we sit on a throne of lies
Otto – all I remember from Chemistry was some angry middle aged woman ranting incoherently about moles. She hated me for some reason.
Grikath – cars powered by lemons when?
But you can build one using kitchen salt, vinegar, some scrap iron, and a plastic tub, no worries.
Well the Med’s outside the door, the cheaper Spanish whites would qualify so it’s just a matter of a few scrap cars & I’m set up.
Grikath
How intensely disappointing.
If only we could get some of this lithium into the tofu supply. Maybe we could get some of these idiots to calm down.
I originally read spodumene as spud u like and had all sorts of weird thoughts about a certain gent in Ely.
Large lead-acid batteries are a very mature technology – not as car batteries but for telephone exchanges. See the old photos here: http://www.ringbell.co.uk/ukwmo/Page240.htm especially the one with a man in it which shows the scale.