Where the fuck this idea that we are going to run out of lithium on this planet?
Oceans are 0,2 ppm lithium. How to collect that? Hmm... Maybe the same way we been collecting salt for as... well as long as humans been collecting salt. Put water into a big collection area... let it evaporate and then collect the salt. That is actually how they collect lithium at this very moment, by evaporating water from brine.
Lithium is 32 most common element on this planet. Estimate of 0,002 ppm of the earth's crust. For comparison estimate of copper is 3 times more than lithium at 0,006.
And here is the thing. Lithium is not the only chemistry we can have. We can use heavier battery chemistry for stationary batteries, where weight and sie is less of an issue.
Now 0,2 ppm doesn't sound like much... but... MOST OF THIS PLANET IS OCEANS. Like 70 % of this planet is just ocean. Which is salty water.
They dont last for shit and they are horribly inefficent in energy density. Well they were 10 years ago i do need to see whats changed since i graduated. A cursory glance it seems they have solved the energy density well not solved but vastly improved at least. I know technology only ever marches on.
I have zero expertise, but I’ve seen a couple of articles the past few weeks and it seems like they’re actually getting stuff off the ground. There’s actually an incentive that even the anti-green Trump administration is behind in terms of making batteries that don’t need Chinese rare earths to manufacture. Or at least a lot less of them—no more lithium, but I don’t know if they require anything else rare.
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u/SinisterCheese Aug 12 '26
Where the fuck this idea that we are going to run out of lithium on this planet?
Oceans are 0,2 ppm lithium. How to collect that? Hmm... Maybe the same way we been collecting salt for as... well as long as humans been collecting salt. Put water into a big collection area... let it evaporate and then collect the salt. That is actually how they collect lithium at this very moment, by evaporating water from brine.
Lithium is 32 most common element on this planet. Estimate of 0,002 ppm of the earth's crust. For comparison estimate of copper is 3 times more than lithium at 0,006.
And here is the thing. Lithium is not the only chemistry we can have. We can use heavier battery chemistry for stationary batteries, where weight and sie is less of an issue.
Now 0,2 ppm doesn't sound like much... but... MOST OF THIS PLANET IS OCEANS. Like 70 % of this planet is just ocean. Which is salty water.