from the 'Oh-I-do-like-to-be-beside-the-seaside' dept.
With increasing industrial demand, rising prices, political and environmental concerns, there's renewed interest in extracting valuable minerals from large bodies of salt water. The most profitable of these being lithium, due to demand for advanced batteries in portable electronics and electric vehicles. This is just a variation on a theme, as lithium "mines" already use brine pools to extract the lithium. But extending the process to seas, oceans, or even the salty output of geothermal power plants, offers the promise of practically limitless supplies (estimated as 230 billion tonnes) of the valuable material.
The U.S. now imports most of the lithium it uses from Chile and Argentina, which along with China and Australia are among the world’s leading producers of the metal, said Brian Jaskula, a lithium commodities specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SlimmPickens on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:56AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Biological [wikipedia.org]
Lithium is found in trace amount in numerous plants, plankton, and invertebrates, at concentrations of 69 to 5,760 parts per billion (ppb). In vertebrates the concentration is slightly lower, and nearly all vertebrate tissue and body fluids have been found to contain lithium ranging from 21 to 763 ppb. Marine organisms tend to bioaccumulate lithium more than terrestrial ones. It is not known whether lithium has a physiological role in any of these organisms, but nutritional studies in mammals have indicated its importance to health, leading to a suggestion that it be classed as an essential trace element with an RDA of 1 mg/day. Observational studies in Japan, reported in 2011, suggested that naturally occurring lithium in drinking water may increase human lifespan.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:19AM
Since I work in the shit-that-goes-underwater industry, I've heard through the grapevine that things are going to become a lot worse. [wikipedia.org]
An industry insider I know has said that that underwater mining is going to get bigger for a number of reasons. Although rare-earth metals are not mentioned specifically in the linked article, I have heard that there is some interest in mining those from the seafloor as well, due to the lopsided dependence on China [forbes.com] for rare-earth metals, and have heard that may be one of the reasons why there is so much tension (over resource deposits) in the South China Sea. Those are merely rumors from an industry insider who frequently travels to that part of the country, so I cannot attest to how much of that is true. Still, there may be interesting (albeit environmentally harmful but profitable to my employer) developments ahead.
(Score: 3, Informative) by SlimmPickens on Thursday September 04 2014, @05:00AM
I work in the shit-that-goes-underwater industry, I've heard through the grapevine that things are going to become a lot worse.
I sell industrial measuring instruments, many of which get used "underwater". Some of the quotes we're doing right now suggest you are right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:15AM
isnt lithium in the first row of periodic table and thus .. wow .. boom.. with moisture, water and air?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:30AM
Goes the other way with halogens - where an electron must be accepted on the p-orbital: the closer to nucleus, the easier is to keep it there (thus fluorine is more reactive than iodine).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:47PM
Yes.
FTFY ;)
Everything is less reactive than something (flourine) and more reactive than something (helium).
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by compro01 on Thursday September 04 2014, @04:33AM
Only if it's pure, which doesn't occur in nature for that reason. All lithium is found in the form of Lithium-containing minerals (Lithium halides, Pegmatite, Spodumene, etc.), which are not reactive in that manner.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:00PM
Came to say this.... You beat me to it.
To expound on what you said. For example pure sodium and chlorine are *VERY* reactive. However much of it is bound into other materials and therefor not very reactive. Put the two together and you can eat it. For example common table salt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04 2014, @05:38PM
Just like there's plenty of sodium (another "boom" metal) in the ocean - but a lot of it is as sodium chloride (salt).
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday September 04 2014, @11:18AM
There's already a long discussion about lithium car batteries [soylentnews.org] which may be of interest.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:07PM
In fact this story was spawned out of my rather long discussion with you. When Boxzy (742) jumped in and started spouting doom and gloom about Li-Ion batteries all being trash in 4 years, and us running out of lithium to make them (you'll remember that one) this is some of the information I looked-up to refer to. It occurred to me that this one was a science-y story in itself, on an important topic people aren't all that familiar with, and where a good number of people may have similar misunderstandings. So, I submitted it... and here we are.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:48PM
If they can do it "right" they won't just stop with extracting lithium. Bromine is already gotten from sea water, and when you concentrate it to get the lithium, the Bromine should become more available. Etc. I've heard that you could extract enough Uranium from sea water to more than pay for the energy requirement of the processing. (This doesn't mean it's cheap enough to bother with.)
The problem is not poisoning the concentrate for extracting the next element in the process of the current extraction. This may not be doable, but if it could be done, it would solve most material shortages. (Actually, it definitely could be done, by running everything through a mass spectrograph, but that would be far from economic.)
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