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Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won’t Let Them Dig It Up (time.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won’t Let Them Dig It Up::Gem hunters in Maine found one of the richest lithium deposits in the U.S. State laws are preventing them from being able to mine it.

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[–] LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Looks like there's three ways to mine Lithium:

Hard Rock mining (as mentioned in the article)
Natural Brine sources
De-salinated water brine

https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/Can-seawater-give-us-lithium-to-meet-our-battery-needs/99/i36

Maine has been burned in the past by previous mining operations closing up and leaving the state to clean up the remaining mess (also in the OP article). Definitely a tough situation all around.

Regarding how much Lithium can be recovered from desalination waste:

https://medium.com/prime-movers-lab/does-the-u-s-have-enough-lithium-to-support-the-growing-ev-market-d73a44a969e5

The US currently has one operating desalination plant, Carlsbad, that processes 50 million gallons of seawater per day. If it recovered 100% of the lithium in that water, it would produce… about 16 tonnes of lithium per year.

VS the amount needed/used per year:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/606481/estimated-lithium-consumption-in-the-united-states/

In 2022 the United States consumed an estimated 3000 metric tons of lithium.

https://www.neefusa.org/story/water/home-water-use-united-states

Each day in the United States, about 27.4 billion gallons of water are withdrawn and delivered from surface water and groundwater sources for residential use

So if we supplemented 10% of our needs from Desalinated water (2.74 Billion gallons a day) and recovered the same max amount of Lithium as the example a day (50 million gallons a day for 16T of Lithium a year) then we get:

(2.74B/50M)16T= 54.816T= 877T of Lithium a year

[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So they US just needs to open 187 more desalination plants... and find a place to put all that deadly brine.

[–] LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

An instant ramen factory would at least take care of the sodium!

That said, looks like the current sea water desalination worldwide is pretty huge:

https://www.wired.com/story/desalination-is-booming-but-what-about-all-that-toxic-brine/

16,000 operating desal facilities worldwide have been producing. Until now. Researchers report today that global desal brine production is 50 percent higher than previous estimates, totaling 141.5 million cubic meters a day, compared to 95 million cubic meters of actual freshwater output from the facilities.

236.5 million cubic meters of sea water processed a day, 264 gallons in a cubic meter = 62.44 Billion gallons of water per day.

If the Lithium content is the same as it is in the US example, then that is a potential 20,000 tons of Lithium a year (again assuming the same Li concentration and 100% extraction.

Sadly still short of the current global demand for lithium:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/u-s-seeks-new-lithium-sources-as-demand-for-clean-energy-grows

Worldwide demand for lithium was about 350,000 tons (317,517 metric tons) in 2020, but industry estimates project demand will be up to six times greater by 2030.