Sure, the "right conditions" being "cheaper than other sources". :-)
There are a few things that we extract from seawater right now... common salt, obviously (though a lot of that is also mined), magnesium, bromine...
It's definitely not a completely cockamamie idea, but I have no idea whether this particular process is enough cheaper than existing sources to make it worthwhile.
They claim $5 USD/kg for electrical costs. Capital costs are unspecified.
Looks like lithium metal goes for about $80-85/kg, so it seems promising, depending on what kind of capital investment is required.
Someone claims to have built a machine to do this.
They're also claiming they *figured out how to derive energy from the rotation of the earth*. Which if it were real would be a major revolution in and of it self. Why not just sell that? Nope, they have to attach a gold extraction thing and desalinate seawater.
Is this the same group that announced they could do this last month? There was a mention on HN.
His team also aims to enter a collaboration with the glass industry, to develop the LLTO membrane at greater scales with affordable cost.
five dollars of electricity (to extract) 1kg of lithium
In other words, they have this working on a lab bench, and the cost estimates are pure speculation.
a copper cathode coated in ruthenium and platinum.
Ruthenium - US$25,000/kg.
Platinium - US$35,000/kg.
Anode cost not included in cost estimate.
This is going to turn on all the usual cost factors - how often do you have to replace the membrane and the anode, what about corrosion, does it need cleaning, etc. There's no question that this is possible, but a big question is whether it is cost effective.
A measurement of how much electricity it uses is not speculation. Don't go too far in your skepticism.
Edit: Unless someone has a specific reason I'm wrong, I stand by this. A criticism that makes four good points and one bad point is worse than a criticism that just makes four good points. I don't see any reason to call out the electricity use specifically as "pure speculation". It's only part of the cost but it's not a made-up number, and it's not a number that should change significantly between the lab and the real world.
This is the fundamental issue. If there is a environmentally friendly way to industrially produce something, it is not rewarded by our current system of capitalism. It is a form of green capitalism, still looking for profits to guide us to the best solution (when in fact there are better solutions. Our assertion of value is based solely on profits which is fundamentally at odds with this climate emergency. Would love to hear alternative thoughts.
Many people consider one of the roles of government to create markets for technologies like you're describing which would otherwise have no markets. Markets are quite good at finding good solutions.
Pursuit of profits isn't at odds with addressing climate change, we just need to make it profitable.
Why is the news like this? There are only two types of articles: those spelling doom and despair on the world and those championing every millimeter of progress while blind to downsides. It's tiring how much work you have to put in to actually pick these apart to find the little nugget of truth in the middle. But apparently the truth doesn't generate clicks so it's lost to us under a cloud of extreme polarization. Maybe there's some law that the more you abstract the details and write for a layman audience the more polarized the result.
Anyways, I expect this one is the latter. It seems the general method is to elecrolyze seawater with a special membrane (lithium lanthanum titanium oxide (LLTO)) and special electrodes (ruthenium and platinum) that only allows lithium ions but not other metals through. "Five dollars of electricity is needed per kilogram", hey that's pretty good. Not so good: did you notice the phrases "seawater", "special membrane", and "special electrodes" in the same sentence? Yeah, that means $$$$$. The quote on that little detail? "His team also aims to enter a collaboration with the glass industry, to develop the LLTO membrane at greater scales with affordable cost." Mhm.
But hey, I'm just an idiot that took a chemistry class way back when and my first paragraph was cast at this article unfairly. Maybe we'll be lucky and get one of those awesome HN moments where an expert in the field chimes in, otherwise I hope to see you in 5 years with another headline claiming that this tech was finally commercialized. And good luck to the team! Just don't hold your breath.
Or Google, Facebook, Youtube, etc design their products/algorithms to maximize addiction, news organizations are forced to adapt their content to game those algorithms in order to survive, and this has been happening for so long that people don't notice how warped and stupid the whole thing is anymore.
While they cover a very particular set of stories I’ve found that the headline news section (beginning of the program) of the daily Democracy Now news program is pretty factual in its delivery. And as they cover news stories in more depth it stays factual in nature. It’s just interviews with a guest where the guest may share more than just a strict set of facts.
It's just a different section of journalism. This is from the _Popular Mechanics_ sort of magazine, with an Editor-in-Chief who did her masters work in "digital communication and viral storytelling."
I'm sure she's very accomplished in her field, but I'm seeing nothing to reassure me about her commitment to scientific accuracy over ad-selling clickbait. Rather the opposite.
Look i get the membrane is expensive.. but why the "seawater" thing: is there some issue around access to the 70% of the world's surface which is ... "seawater" I don't understand?
And, what if the Feedstock was from brine Lakes for commercial salt extraction and was lithium rich? (I am unsure if lithium stays in solution when sodium chloride comes out)
In addition to the corrosion problem, extracting anything valuable from seawater means processing a huge volume of it. Expensive membrane * huge volume = huge expense.
They mention sending wastewater downstream for desalination, so if this plant is built alongside an existing desalination plant, then the desalination plant can take care of the offshore piping and pumping, removing a lot of the complexity for this lithium extraction plant.
Because this (and 99% of everything else pushed) is not news.
It's entertainment designed with only one purpose - to keep your engagement. Whether it's clicks or eyeballs on a TV channel, or buying a newspaper or magazine, it's a huge game to grab and hold your attention for as long as possible.
Other than a few quality outlets (NPR in the US, CBC in Canada, BBC in UK, etc.), the "news" stopped being that a very long time ago.
$5 of electricity is a LOT of electricity to get only 1kg of Lithium. That's like 50kWh or almost 2x the amount used per day in the average home. Are we currently using more energy than this to extract 1kg of Lithium?
Assuming this is the main cost, at $5,000/ton it's not so far from existing extraction methods:
> Most of the world’s lithium comes from brine deposits in South America, although companies like Talison also operate hard rock mines in Australia. The cost of extracting a ton from a brine site costs around $2,000 says Paes-Braga while mined ton of lithium costs closer to $4,000. (These are operational costs that do not include capital.)
Of course for those the main expense isn't electricity but labor, etc.
Because the headline "Incremental Progress, but Situation Mostly Normal" doesn't generate as much advertising revenue. I find it irritating too though.
> There are only two types of articles: those spelling doom and despair on the world and those championing every millimeter of progress while blind to downsides.
$5 of electricity is a near meaningless metric. The real question is how many kWh does the process require to get the 1kg of Lithium? Electricity prices vary widely, so I don't understand why they would use dollar figures, especially on an engineering site.
If we know how many kWh of electricity is used to get the Lithium, then we can compare that to how much energy the Lithium would be able to store and release over it's usable life.
Some rough numbers in my head, the total weight of Lithium in the average 18650 battery is probably 25 grams (the other components being other metals like Cobalt).
This means that the 1kg of Lithium would be able to make about 40 or so 18650 batteries.
The average 18650 battery has an average watt hour capacity of 11 (a good one). So with 40 batteries you have 440wh of storage.
The average lifespan of the batteries would be about 1000 cycles... so 440kWh of capacity over the lifetime of the battery.
I will assume that the electricity rate they use for the $5 figure is a very cheap $0.10/kWh. Meaning that it would require 50kWh in the extraction process alone to extract enough lithium capable of storing 440kw over it's usable life.
I have no idea if this is a good return or not compared to how much energy is spent mining lithium.
"Based on these data, we estimated the total electricity required to enrich 1 kg lithium from seawater to 9000 ppm in five stages to be 76.34 kW h. Simultaneously, 0.87 kg H2 and 31.12 kg Cl2 were collected from the cathode and the anode, respectively. Taking the US electricity price of US$ 0.065 per kW h into consideration, the total electricity cost for this process is approximately US$ 5.0."
So, the electricity usage is even higher than you estimated, with an even lower cost per kWh. But that said, there are places in the US that have even cheaper electricity (especially if you're looking at industrial rates).
Your estimate is off by an order of magnitude. An 18650 cell with 11 watt hours of capacity would have about 0.9 grams of lithium. A kg of lithium could create around 12 KWh of batteries, which would store 12,000 KWh based on 1,000 cycles.
I don't know for sure, but based on current lithium prices I highly doubt that current lithium extraction processes use less than 50 KWh per kg. That's a really small amount of energy for such a useful material.
Exactly. Even 1000 kWh/kg would still represent a single-digit percentage of the power that will eventually be handled by the product. Pretty neat when you think of it that way.
Sounds like a good company to setup when electricity prices go negative. With an extra green energy push the extra power can go into creating lithium, which can go into batteries to increase the amount of usable power we can store.
Is this a good thing to due while reliant on coal? Probably not.
If you're building a seawater extraction plant in Arizona, the price of electricity is the least of your worries. (though admittedly Arizona has toyed with the idea of a desalination plant in the Sea of Cortez (so it'd be in Mexico), but they'd also have to build a power plant with it)
Likewise, if power is a significant part of your operating expenses, probably shouldn't run it in the state with the most expensive electrical costs.
Though my point was more that the actual power consumption in KWh isn't essential to know for figuring out if this process is viable, just a ball park price base on some average industrial power prices is good enough.
News media corps are clearly learning! They don't ask questions that suggest bullshit... (whats that law about if the headline is a wuestion the answer is no?)
they just directly suggest nonsense now. Cool, cool
Thinking out of the box, I wonder if the ocean could be turned into a giant battery somehow. Considering most population lives closer to the coasts, it would be amazing if it was possible without any environmental harm.
Not saying something like electrifying the oceans. But, something like power generation with Wind, solar or tidal energy, and store it in some kinetic form like Norway did with water up the mountain, and then transfer power upon need to the coastal cities.
58 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadThere are a few things that we extract from seawater right now... common salt, obviously (though a lot of that is also mined), magnesium, bromine...
It's definitely not a completely cockamamie idea, but I have no idea whether this particular process is enough cheaper than existing sources to make it worthwhile.
They claim $5 USD/kg for electrical costs. Capital costs are unspecified.
Looks like lithium metal goes for about $80-85/kg, so it seems promising, depending on what kind of capital investment is required.
They're also claiming they *figured out how to derive energy from the rotation of the earth*. Which if it were real would be a major revolution in and of it self. Why not just sell that? Nope, they have to attach a gold extraction thing and desalinate seawater.
They're obviously a quack.
His team also aims to enter a collaboration with the glass industry, to develop the LLTO membrane at greater scales with affordable cost.
five dollars of electricity (to extract) 1kg of lithium
In other words, they have this working on a lab bench, and the cost estimates are pure speculation.
a copper cathode coated in ruthenium and platinum.
Ruthenium - US$25,000/kg.
Platinium - US$35,000/kg.
Anode cost not included in cost estimate.
This is going to turn on all the usual cost factors - how often do you have to replace the membrane and the anode, what about corrosion, does it need cleaning, etc. There's no question that this is possible, but a big question is whether it is cost effective.
Edit: Unless someone has a specific reason I'm wrong, I stand by this. A criticism that makes four good points and one bad point is worse than a criticism that just makes four good points. I don't see any reason to call out the electricity use specifically as "pure speculation". It's only part of the cost but it's not a made-up number, and it's not a number that should change significantly between the lab and the real world.
Pursuit of profits isn't at odds with addressing climate change, we just need to make it profitable.
Ruthenium… edit: ops NN.
Anyways, I expect this one is the latter. It seems the general method is to elecrolyze seawater with a special membrane (lithium lanthanum titanium oxide (LLTO)) and special electrodes (ruthenium and platinum) that only allows lithium ions but not other metals through. "Five dollars of electricity is needed per kilogram", hey that's pretty good. Not so good: did you notice the phrases "seawater", "special membrane", and "special electrodes" in the same sentence? Yeah, that means $$$$$. The quote on that little detail? "His team also aims to enter a collaboration with the glass industry, to develop the LLTO membrane at greater scales with affordable cost." Mhm.
But hey, I'm just an idiot that took a chemistry class way back when and my first paragraph was cast at this article unfairly. Maybe we'll be lucky and get one of those awesome HN moments where an expert in the field chimes in, otherwise I hope to see you in 5 years with another headline claiming that this tech was finally commercialized. And good luck to the team! Just don't hold your breath.
Like advertising, journalism is also plagued by Dark Patterns. The feedback loops in which journalists operate seems to encourage these patterns.
The Moon landing would've been "It's official, we can now settle other planets" today :D
is this latent sexism or are you just generally dismissive of people?
But seriously (and I can't see linkedin), it sounds like the qualification is most relevant in response to the comment the OP made.
Off topic, but damn if it doesn't seem harder and harder not to be these days...
And, what if the Feedstock was from brine Lakes for commercial salt extraction and was lithium rich? (I am unsure if lithium stays in solution when sodium chloride comes out)
Because this (and 99% of everything else pushed) is not news.
It's entertainment designed with only one purpose - to keep your engagement. Whether it's clicks or eyeballs on a TV channel, or buying a newspaper or magazine, it's a huge game to grab and hold your attention for as long as possible.
Other than a few quality outlets (NPR in the US, CBC in Canada, BBC in UK, etc.), the "news" stopped being that a very long time ago.
> Most of the world’s lithium comes from brine deposits in South America, although companies like Talison also operate hard rock mines in Australia. The cost of extracting a ton from a brine site costs around $2,000 says Paes-Braga while mined ton of lithium costs closer to $4,000. (These are operational costs that do not include capital.)
Of course for those the main expense isn't electricity but labor, etc.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2016/08/29/is-t...
Because the headline "Incremental Progress, but Situation Mostly Normal" doesn't generate as much advertising revenue. I find it irritating too though.
This is the consequence of optimizing for clicks
If we know how many kWh of electricity is used to get the Lithium, then we can compare that to how much energy the Lithium would be able to store and release over it's usable life. Some rough numbers in my head, the total weight of Lithium in the average 18650 battery is probably 25 grams (the other components being other metals like Cobalt).
This means that the 1kg of Lithium would be able to make about 40 or so 18650 batteries.
The average 18650 battery has an average watt hour capacity of 11 (a good one). So with 40 batteries you have 440wh of storage.
The average lifespan of the batteries would be about 1000 cycles... so 440kWh of capacity over the lifetime of the battery.
I will assume that the electricity rate they use for the $5 figure is a very cheap $0.10/kWh. Meaning that it would require 50kWh in the extraction process alone to extract enough lithium capable of storing 440kw over it's usable life.
I have no idea if this is a good return or not compared to how much energy is spent mining lithium.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/EE/D1EE0...
"Based on these data, we estimated the total electricity required to enrich 1 kg lithium from seawater to 9000 ppm in five stages to be 76.34 kW h. Simultaneously, 0.87 kg H2 and 31.12 kg Cl2 were collected from the cathode and the anode, respectively. Taking the US electricity price of US$ 0.065 per kW h into consideration, the total electricity cost for this process is approximately US$ 5.0."
So, the electricity usage is even higher than you estimated, with an even lower cost per kWh. But that said, there are places in the US that have even cheaper electricity (especially if you're looking at industrial rates).
Here is an article describing electrowinning iron at 3.53kw/kg.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6918249/
I don't know for sure, but based on current lithium prices I highly doubt that current lithium extraction processes use less than 50 KWh per kg. That's a really small amount of energy for such a useful material.
Is this a good thing to due while reliant on coal? Probably not.
I wonder how many years until this is viable.
It's not completely meaningless, as it gives a sense of the operating costs, and dollars are easily turned into electricity and vice-versa.
Likewise, if power is a significant part of your operating expenses, probably shouldn't run it in the state with the most expensive electrical costs.
Though my point was more that the actual power consumption in KWh isn't essential to know for figuring out if this process is viable, just a ball park price base on some average industrial power prices is good enough.
they just directly suggest nonsense now. Cool, cool
Not saying something like electrifying the oceans. But, something like power generation with Wind, solar or tidal energy, and store it in some kinetic form like Norway did with water up the mountain, and then transfer power upon need to the coastal cities.
Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lithium from seawater - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27411631 - June 2021 (290 comments)