Matthew sends in this:
Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia have figured out how to extract lithium, an essential part of electric vehicle batteries, from seawater in a more cost-effective way.
No, I don’t know. But I have heard about this.
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/we-do-think-these-worries-over-critical-minerals-are-overblown
https://capital.com/will-lithium-pop-like-the-cannabis-bubble
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4498017-vulcan-energy-resources-no-technical-reason-this-should-not-work
All mention it.
As it happens I talked to a guy working – entirely independently – on similar membrane stuff and he says stuff to extract from 50 and 100 ppm solutions is commercial and good to go. Almost off the shelf right now.
So another order or more of magnitude better? Sure, I could believe that. I wouldn;t say that proves it, no, but I could well believe it possible by refining the membranes.
And there’s another point here, about desalination plants. The output of a desal plant is fresh water, sure. But there’s also an output of saltier than normal water as well. That could also be a good starting point.
If these guys are right, at $5 a kg of power input? That’s a complete game changer. Li is currently $80 a kg.
Of course, anyone would want to see a great deal more proof but I can imagine them being right, I’d put it well inside the possibility envelope.
Well, that would bring the price of electric cars down.
We would still need the new infrastructure to power them, which doesn’t seem to be in progress.
At least we’ll all be able to afford nice four wheel paper weights for our drives.
You reckon the Saudis will be doing this with “renewables”?
Wish I’d paid more attention to my electrochemistry lectures.
(The problem with university chemistry for me was that while the best labs were great fun the lectures were overwhelmingly dull. The tutorials weren’t much better once I’d realised that many tutors couldn’t give good answers to “what’s the evidence for that?” Physics tutors, who tended to be less pleasant members of the species than the chemists, at least usually had good answers to that question. )
Still need the cobalt from Congolese children.
@TtC
Depends if you’re using Li-NiMnCo or Li-FePO4. One does, the other doesn’t…
The trick is in the ceramic filter they use. The rest of the setup is pretty standard for ion-selection setups.
So… Lab-scale, but plausible.
And yes, Chester.. The Saoudis would. The oil is going to run out someday, and they’re well-placed for a solar setup in otherwise pretty useless real estate. And have the $$ to finance a pilot plant outright.
One of the Princes will diversify if this looks interesting.
They may be Evil Ragheads, but they’re smart Evil Ragheads.
‘ The output of a desal plant is fresh water, sure.’
Plus a solution toxic, reactive, corrosive dissolved salts as well as sodium chloride.
And why will we be needing all this lithium for car batteries given that only a few EVs will be produced and only for the rich, there being too little ‘renewable’ generated electricity to run them on?
“Plus a solution toxic, reactive, corrosive dissolved salts as well as sodium chloride.”
Err, yes:
“But there’s also an output of saltier than normal water as well.”
@John B
I don’t think “only a few EVs will be produced and only for the rich” is looking good as a prediction. They’re clearly becoming a mainstream product, with consumers somewhat higher up in the income distribution than their petrol/diesel counterparts but definitely not only a top 1% or 10% kind of thing.
UK car sales 2022 = 1.61 million; of which EVs = 267,203 – almost exactly 1 in 6. But I’m not sure how long this increasing trend will continue – there’s a lot of motorists for whom an EV is utterly impractical (road warriors, those with nowhere to charge from home, petrol-heads, …) – how many of the rest have already bought an EV?
Build a very expensive plant. Run it 8 hours a day? No chance.
Also, if the world stops using gas the Saudis aren’t going to run out.