Electric Vehicles May Drive a Lithium Supply Crunch (ieee.org) 176
A carbon-free future "will require many millions of batteries, both to drive electric vehicles and to store wind and solar power on the grid," reports IEEE Spectrum. Unfortunately, today's battery chemistries "mostly rely on lithium — a metal that could soon face a global supply crunch."
Recently, Rystad Energy projected a "serious lithium supply deficit" in 2027 as mining capacity lags behind the EV boom. The mismatch could effectively delay the production of around 3.3 million battery-powered passenger cars that year, according to the research firm. Without new mining projects, delays could swell to the equivalent of 20 million cars in 2030. Battery-powered buses, trucks, ships, and grid storage systems will also feel the squeeze... [T]he solution isn't as simple as mining more hard rock — called spodumene — or tapping more underground brine deposits to extract lithium. That's because most of the better, easier-to-exploit reserves are already spoken for in Australia (for hard rock) and in Chile and Argentina (for brine). To drastically scale capacity, producers will also need to exploit the world's "marginal" resources, which are costlier and more energy-intensive to develop than conventional counterparts...
Concerns about supply constraints are driving innovation in the lithium industry. A handful of projects in North America and Europe are piloting and testing "direct lithium extraction," an umbrella term for technologies that, generally speaking, use electricity and chemical processes to isolate and extract concentrated lithium... In southwestern Germany, Vulcan Energy is extracting lithium from geothermal springs that bubble thousands of meters below the Rhine river. The startup began operating its first pilot plant in mid-April. Vulcan said it could be extracting 15,000 metric tons of lithium hydroxide — a compound used in battery cathodes — per year. In southern California, Controlled Thermal Resources is developing a geothermal power plant and lithium extraction facility at the Salton Sea. The company said a pilot facility will start producing 20,000 metric tons per year of lithium hydroxide, also by 2024.
Another way to boost lithium supplies is to recover the metal from spent batteries, of which there is already ample supply. Today, less than 5 percent of all spent lithium-ion batteries are recycled, in large part because the packs are difficult and expensive to dismantle. Many batteries now end up in landfills, leaching chemicals into the environment and wasting usable materials. But Sophie Lu, the head of metals and mining for BloombergNEF, said the industry is likely to ramp up recycling after 2028, when the supply deficit kicks in. Developers are already starting to build new facilities, including a $175 million plant in Rochester, N.Y. When completed, it will be North America's largest recycling plant for lithium-ion batteries.
The Economic Times also argues that electric cars and renewable energy "may not be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people.
"That environmental toll has often been overlooked in part because there is a race underway among the United States, China, Europe and other major powers. Echoing past contests and wars over gold and oil, governments are fighting for supremacy over minerals that could help countries achieve economic and technological dominance for decades to come."
Concerns about supply constraints are driving innovation in the lithium industry. A handful of projects in North America and Europe are piloting and testing "direct lithium extraction," an umbrella term for technologies that, generally speaking, use electricity and chemical processes to isolate and extract concentrated lithium... In southwestern Germany, Vulcan Energy is extracting lithium from geothermal springs that bubble thousands of meters below the Rhine river. The startup began operating its first pilot plant in mid-April. Vulcan said it could be extracting 15,000 metric tons of lithium hydroxide — a compound used in battery cathodes — per year. In southern California, Controlled Thermal Resources is developing a geothermal power plant and lithium extraction facility at the Salton Sea. The company said a pilot facility will start producing 20,000 metric tons per year of lithium hydroxide, also by 2024.
Another way to boost lithium supplies is to recover the metal from spent batteries, of which there is already ample supply. Today, less than 5 percent of all spent lithium-ion batteries are recycled, in large part because the packs are difficult and expensive to dismantle. Many batteries now end up in landfills, leaching chemicals into the environment and wasting usable materials. But Sophie Lu, the head of metals and mining for BloombergNEF, said the industry is likely to ramp up recycling after 2028, when the supply deficit kicks in. Developers are already starting to build new facilities, including a $175 million plant in Rochester, N.Y. When completed, it will be North America's largest recycling plant for lithium-ion batteries.
The Economic Times also argues that electric cars and renewable energy "may not be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people.
"That environmental toll has often been overlooked in part because there is a race underway among the United States, China, Europe and other major powers. Echoing past contests and wars over gold and oil, governments are fighting for supremacy over minerals that could help countries achieve economic and technological dominance for decades to come."
Electric Cars? Green? (Score:3)
Did anyone ever think this? I mean, electric cars are less environmentally ruinous than petrol cars, but it's always been a vast stretch to call them green.
Re:Electric Cars? Green? (Score:5, Interesting)
Did anyone ever think this?
Yes. People have been predicting a lithium crunch for decades.
But what always happens is that a supply squeeze leads to higher prices and higher prices lead to increased production and the squeeze goes away. There is no reason to believe that "this time will be different". If the price goes up enough, it becomes profitable to extract lithium from seawater, especially in co-production with desalinated water. There is plenty of lithium in the Dead Sea and the Great Salt Lake.
Higher prices will also spur the development of other battery chemistries, especially for grid storage where there is no need for energy density. Grid storage could use sodium or vanadium or whatever.
Imean, electric cars are less environmentally ruinous than petrol cars, but it's always been a vast stretch to call them green.
Don't make perfect the enemy of good. EVs are a big environmental improvement over ICEs.
Instead of waiting for all that (Score:2)
I don't understand why we don't use gov't to do the things we want done but that businesses
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why not get the Government involved so we can get out ahead of it.
Great idea! The government has a fantastic track record of successfully managing economies.
There is even a book that explains how to do it [wikipedia.org], highly recommended by many college professors.
Re: Instead of waiting for all that (Score:2)
While government can help smooth out supply chsin imbalances, this is probably one of the very few things the free market is good at. Price and demand. And of course gouging,soeculation, monopolies, and adter the crinch follows the glut, at which point these go bankrupt at taxpayers expense.
The current massive chip shortages (Score:3)
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In real world on the other hand, lithium in batteries is currently not meaningfully recyclable due to the chemical properties. When you send a li-ion battery for recycling, they incinerate the thing to extract metals like copper and nickel from them. Lithium is lost during this process.
There are quite a few pilot projects currently ongoing doing various research on being able to extract more than that from lithium ion batteries, like plans for a 2024 pilot plant in Norway to try to get more out of them usin
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We have been developing them for well over two decades. It's genuinely hard to do it, and it's nowhere as cheap as evaporating brine or even mining.
Right now, "old (lithium ion) batteries" are indeed recycled and have been for a long time. We just don't get any lithium out of those recycled batteries, because lithium is destroyed during recycling process. What we're getting out is metals that don't burn, such as copper and nickel.
Re: Instead of waiting for all that (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, we have the strategic oil reserve. Government is also the ideal vessel to identify which jobs will face labor shortages, and give incentives before the industry suddenly discover they need X people with this skill and must wait 4 years for them to finish their education. We slso have fiscal policy. Arguably keynes is superior to milton effing friedman. Compleyely unregilated markets just lead to boom and bust, exploitation and misery. And of course some wealthy robber barons.
You an American? (Score:2)
Govt doesn't fit into your preferred world view, so you've dismissed it out of hand. That's to your detriment though.
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If so your food supply is managed by the govt.
So? "X is true" is very different from "X is a good idea."
Yes, the government interferes with food production. But we would be better off if it didn't.
Do you really think that corn subsidies, sugar subsidies, HFCS subsidies, are good things?
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Yes, the government interferes with food production. But we would be better off if it didn't.
Do you really think that corn subsidies, sugar subsidies, HFCS subsidies, are good things?
Do you think all soybean farmers should go bankrupt at China's whim?
You think food should be like microchips. Where the free market can completely stuff everything up? Instead of people not having new cars, people don't have enough food to eat.
Not everything needs to be at the bleeding edge of efficiency.
Sometimes it helps to have a bit of slack. Some things are just too important and you need a little interference.
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As a food crop (soy sauce, tempeh, tofu etc), or as a biofuel [npr.org]?
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Don't get me wrong. Governments are quite capable of fucking things up too. Government always bad is just as stupid as government always good.
Interesting article thanks.
If there was a massive drought or not enough soy for whatever reason. Government could simply say no more biofuel from soy this year, and use the soy for food instead.
Without the biofuel demand there might not have been enough soy to do that. More soy is made than we need most of the time. It's wasteful. But that means there's still enou
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Perhaps you should rad the book once, so you understand about what it actually is.
It is for example not about "managed economies", oops.
Re:Instead of waiting for all that (Score:5, Insightful)
In America 1/2 of the Government is denying that Pollution from fossil fuels is a bad thing, despite generations of science around the world including scientist who don't give a crap on which party is in charge of the US. It became a political issue in the late 1970's and early 1980's where we had a fuel shortage (sounds familiar) so the government got invoked and mandated cars use less gas. So the car companies did the easy way out, and just made smaller and flimsy cars. Which were crap, and more dangerous. This had put into people head, Environmentalist want to take away our cars, and decided that the tradeoff of the crappy and dangerous cars wasn't worth the environmental benefits. Which then snowballed into just Climate Change denial, because it just made it easier sound bite.
Now this group hates Electric Cars (and mostly on Tesla), because they are making cars that people want to drive, normal sizes, performs better, has a good battery range. So the idea of the Gremlin isn't much of a case any more, and basically bypassing their argument, because people are buying them, not because they are green, but because they have some real advantages.
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But what always happens is that a supply squeeze leads to higher prices and higher prices lead to increased production and the squeeze goes away. There is no reason to believe that "this time will be different". If the price goes up enough, it becomes profitable to extract lithium from seawater, especially in co-production with desalinated water. There is plenty of lithium in the Dead Sea and the Great Salt Lake.
Well said. The pithy quote I've heard is that "The solution for higher prices is higher prices."
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Higher prices will also spur the development of other battery chemistries
I read a marvelous essay years ago (which, sadly, I can't find now; if anyone recognizes it and has a link, I'd love to find it again) by a guy who realized while he was in college and color TVs were just becoming widely available that it would be impossible for more than a few tens of millions of families to have color TVs, because the total available supply of the element used to make the (IIRC) red phosphors would run out. He was concerned about the inappropriateness of hyping this new technology which w
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Please, don't feed the trolls. Occasionally, responding to them can be done safely - but only if you recognize that they're trolls and call them on it.
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Yes, a "Lithium Crunch" is about as likely as the world's oil supplies running out. "Peak Oil" was first predicted to take place in 1922. 100 years later and dozens more predictions, and there seems to still be plenty of oil left.
If electric cars become mainstream around the world, an interesting side-effect would be the price of oil plummeting for good.
Well, Li is much more rare than oil. And most of it is in Bolivia although the US has some (NV and a bit in UT). So up to a point you can increase Li extraction. However, Li is used in batteries which are energy carriers. So the amount of EVs doesn't really effect an energy producing industry like oil extraction. It does however increase the total amount of mining we do while at the same time allowing for more variable (renewable) power sources. So its a trade off. Of course, we could just use Gen IV
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Well, Li is much more rare than oil.
Lithium is not comparable to oil.
ICEVs run on oil.
EVs don't run on lithium. The lithium isn't "used up".
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Lithium is not comparable to oil.
But you can compare its environmental cost of extraction and its percentage of the earth's crust.
EVs don't run on lithium. The lithium isn't "used up".
No EV's run on whatever is used to power the grid. And Li-ion batteries absolutely use up some of the Li. Recycling is never 100%. And finally, you missed the key point about an energy carrier vs energy source. Fuel when transported requires little to no resources (it is extremely light but has a lot of energy). By that measure, fuel is a better battery than Li-ion (fuel scales better but is less efficient
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But you can compare its environmental cost of extraction and its percentage of the earth's crust.
It basically has no environmental cost. No idea where this myth is coming from. You pump brine down into rocky sediments, and when the brine comes back up, you either start separating or let it simply dry to salts and then separate it. Actually quite easy.
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Well, Li is much more rare than oil. :P
Most certainly not.
I suggest to look at a periodic table
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Wait, you thought quora was a grammar rulebook? For English, an open language?
You definitely need to go back to grammaticaster school and finish your degree.
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Yes, a "Lithium Crunch" is about as likely as the world's oil supplies running out. "Peak Oil" was first predicted to take place in 1922. 100 years later and dozens more predictions, and there seems to still be plenty of oil left.
A supply crunch isn't peak anything.
A supply crunch [cambridge.org] is just a temporary period where there isn't enough supply to meet demand and the price goes up until there is.
There have been plenty of oil supply crunches [google.com] clearly we didn't run out of oil.
They are just warning lithium will be get expensive for a while. Until new supply can be found and extracted.
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"Peak Oil" was first predicted to take place in 1922. 100 years later and dozens more predictions, and there seems to still be plenty of oil left.
It seems likely that we've already passed peak oil, not because we're running out of oil but because demand is declining.
Not really. (Score:5, Interesting)
electric cars are less environmentally ruinous than petrol cars
Petrol cars aren't just ruinous, they are ruinous for their entire lifetime. As long as you are driving a petrol car, you are ruining the environment. The process of building and powering an EV can be improved until it has a negligible impact but petrol cars never can because they depend on polluting in order to function. EVs aren't prefect entire ecosystems aren't destroyed in failed attempts to get a little more fuel for them.
Re:Not really. (Score:5, Interesting)
When is a petrol car not a petrol car? When it is running on synthesized zero-carbon hydrocarbon fuels.
The problem with a petrol car is people are fueling them with petrol. Fuel them with a synthesized zero-carbon hydrocarbon fuel and the issues of CO2 go away. Because synthesized fuels contain no sulfur there is no sulfur in the exhaust. We have triple acting catalytic converters now to deal with NOx, soot, and incomplete combustion of fuel. The air out of the exhaust is cleaner than that going in. The cleanliness is in large part because there is no sulfur to mess with the catalytic converter, a problem that will likely only be solved with synthesized fuel. The problem of increased CO2 in the air will certainly only be solved with synthesized fuels.
The great thing about synthesized fuels is that every vehicle with an internal combustion engine today can run on synthesized fuel. I'll read comments on how EVs mean that we can transition to "green" electricity to produce cleaner air if only everyone buys a new car. With synthesized fuels nobody needs a new car. If they do get a new car then buying a "petrol" car, EV, or hybrid doesn't matter because in the background all the energy is moving to low CO2 emitting sources.
The "petrol" car is ruinous, but we can make it not a petrol car by just using synthesized fuels. That being an option was even mentioned in the Spectrum article. https://spectrum.ieee.org/ener... [ieee.org]
Lithium availability âoewill become a serious threat to the long-term sustainability of the transport sector unless a mix of measures is taken to ameliorate the challenge,â the researchers wrote in the 2020 study. Such measures include developing new battery chemistries, producing more synthetic fuels, and building more railwaysâ"options that donâ(TM)t require lithium.
There is wide awareness of this as an option in the energy industry. There's been a lot of research into synthesized fuels by the US military and private industry. The US Navy plan is to use nuclear power reactors on large warships to produce the fuel needed for the aircraft and small support craft that it carries. That same technology can be used in large onshore commercial facilities to produce fuels for planes, ships, trucks, and trains.
We can remove the environmental damage an internal combustion engine does far more easily that you claim. EVs are not viable outside of small commuter cars, and a few other niche applications, but we can turn even a Boeing 747 into a zero carbon vehicle with synthesized fuels.
We can keep hoping and praying about finding some new batteries to save us or we can use a known working technology to turn every "petrol car" into a vehicle with a lower environmental impact than any EV. I expect politicians to keep virtue signalling with EV and solar PV subsidies until reality slaps them in the face and they get out of the way of nuclear fission power and synthesized fuels. If the politicians really wanted to solve the problems of CO2 emissions, energy production, and global warming then they'd be talking nonstop about nuclear fission and fuel synthesis.
Re:Not really. (Score:5, Insightful)
That helps if all you care about is CO2 and global warming. The other trouble with burning hydrocarbons for transportation is that you have thousands of combustion sources in small areas. The health effects of those pollution sources are shorter term since they drive up health care costs.
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This is a solved problem. Modern engines with triple action catalytic converters mean the air out of the tailpipe is often cleaner than the air that went in. The only way these can produce a health problem is if the area is so small that the reduction of oxygen, and the increase of CO2 and water vapor, somehow exceed safe bounds. This is not likely in any out of doors setting.
Would EVs mean even better air quality? Perhaps but unlikely. There will still be particulates from tires and brakes. I know pe
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"Modern engines with triple action catalytic converters mean the air out of the tailpipe is often cleaner than the air that went in. " you must live in a highly polluted area if that was the case - got any links to this amazing device?
Yes, I do have links to articles that describe this device in considerable detail.
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You seem to have a very exaggerated view of modern pollution control systems. They do an amazing job of getting us to point where they are now, but nowhere near the point where tire/brake particulate is the largest pollution source on a modern car.
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The problem with a petrol car is people are fueling them with petrol. Fuel them with a synthesized zero-carbon hydrocarbon fuel and the issues of CO2 go away.
Boom. Now right away, you have a different problem. You've violated the laws of thermodynamics and have rent the fabric of the universe. :-)
In theory, a synthesized carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuel would be amazing. In practice, the energy spent always massively exceeds the energy produced, so it is only carbon neutral if you ignore the extra energy spent and the carbon that is almost invariably released when producing that extra energy.
The closest you get to carbon-neutral hydrocarbons would be something
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In theory, a synthesized carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuel would be amazing. In practice, the energy spent always massively exceeds the energy produced, so it is only carbon neutral if you ignore the extra energy spent and the carbon that is almost invariably released when producing that extra energy.
Oh, right, I forgot to put "zero carbon" in scare quotes because nothing is truly zero carbon. Using nuclear power to produce hydrocarbons would have a net carbon emissions lower than solar powered EVs. Can we get closer to zero carbon with nuclear power charging EVs? Sure, but at that point the carbon emissions are so low that the difference between the two is a rounding error.
There's no plausible universe in which they will ever achieve anywhere close to the overall efficiency of a pure-electric powertrain in terms of energy input to energy output, much less if that energy input comes from anything approaching a green energy source.
The energy efficiency of the process is quite irrelevant when the problem is CO2 emissions from jetliners. There are no practic
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Even if you make such a synthesized fuel. It's still probably more efficient to burn it in a central location to produce electricity. And use EV's for most people.
Yea yea that one guy tows a boat 500 miles twice a day. But for regular people EV's are fine.
It will only get better as more green energy is installed. Eventually the synthesized fuel can replace natural gas as backup for the power grid. It's probably easier and cheaper to synthesize natural gas for a turbine than the gas used in an ICE anyway.
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Even if you make such a synthesized fuel. It's still probably more efficient to burn it in a central location to produce electricity. And use EV's for most people.
It appears you forget that this is a discussion about a shortage of batteries for EVs. EVs will not be practical for most people if a shortage of material for making batteries drives up prices for EVs.
Yea yea that one guy tows a boat 500 miles twice a day. But for regular people EV's are fine.
It will only get better as more green energy is installed.
The process of synthesizing fuels will also improve.
Eventually the synthesized fuel can replace natural gas as backup for the power grid.
Tanking up on synthesized natural gas for backup power does mean we don't need batteries for grid storage but that is not likely enough to free sufficient battery capacity for everyone to have a pure EV. I expect hybrids to be popular. Commuter cars would
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can you lock yourself in a confined space with the engine running these "synthesized zero-carbon hydrocarbon fuels" and not want to escape after a short while?
No, but a car in a confined space isn't going to get you anywhere. Why would anyone run a car in a confined space? That serves no purpose and so is not relevant.
Until they can produce a "synthesized zero-carbon hydrocarbon fuels" that does not have any polluting emissions, its cloud cuckoo land.
Cuckoo land is demanding we get zero pollution fuels before we stop using the polluting fuels we burn now.
You know what? Maybe you have it right. We should bar EVs for sale until they get 300 miles on a 5 minute "refill" like a gasoline burner. How does that sound? That sounds like a moronic idea. So, here is a better idea. We get the politi
Re: Not really. (Score:2)
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... As long as you are driving a petrol car, you are ruining the environment. The process of building and powering an EV can be improved until it has a negligible impact ...
The presence of traffic ruins the environment. Kids used their streets as playgrounds before ther became dangerous rat runs and parking lots. EVs won't change that.
Re:Electric Cars? Green? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes people have though of this.
Being that your ICE based car takes 8-20 gallons of Gas a week That gas has to come out of somewhere. So you are mining/pumping far more product than the electric car. Vs mining a product that can be recycled over time, as well will normally stay for the life of you car.
Nothing that you do is 0 impact on the environment. Every breath you take emits CO2, every step you take you may squish a bug, or make the ground to pack for a plant to grow. Electric Cars are made by industry, and that isn't good for the environment. Oddly enough, most people know this, it isn't a surprise. However moving from an ICE based car to an Electric Car, offers a better solution that is much better than ICE Cars.
The supply crunch, isn't as much of a lack of supply of Lithium on the planet. But our current infrastructure in mining and refining it for batteries. These mining companies cannot just jump their production at the speed of demand for it. They need to squire mining rights, higher and train staff, get more equipment....
Now over time, if say some of the oil companies transitioned to Lithium mining, and over time, the existing electric car market will be recycled, we should be able to fix the supply limitation. But at this moment, were we pissed off a lot of trading partners, a global pandemic that slowed down the economy, and a very rapid rise in the popularity of electric vehicles, this has put a supply problem.
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But how to get people to use cars less? Cycle? - people think roads are too dangerous because of all the cars, government doesn't want to spend money on a niche thing and so cycling remains as a 'feels dangerous' thing, nevermind that cyclists on average live years longer due to fitness.
How many people calls themselves environmentalists or claim to care about the environment but still drive a fossil fuel vehicle. Never mind all the unnecessary SUVs and trucks that burn 2+ times the amount of fuel needed to
Re:What we need... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, what we need are alternatives.
At least for grid storage, maybe improved versions of old technology,
such as nickel iron or nickel zinc. While they have less energy density,
they have other attributes that could useful. For example, nickel iron
cells can used both for direct energy storage and hydrogen production
for use in, for example, fuel cells. Also, they are very durable and more
easily recycled.
Already questioned and answered (Score:5, Insightful)
When your opponent's whole argument is about an all controlling authoritarian monster forcing you to take the vaccine with something harmful mixed in, like sterilization chemicals etc..
Nearly two weeks ago I raised this very point [slashdot.org]. I was told, by several resonders, not to worry because there were already recyclers for these lithium batteries.
Of course the costs to recycle are high and it's dangerous because you can't just use a can opener to pry open the batteries, but hey, not to worry. Tesla has everything covered. Or so the responders kept reminding me.
But here's the real question. If only 5% of these batteries are being recycled, what's happened to the other 95%? Are they sitting in warehouses collecting dust and/or leaking their contents, or have they been buried in landfills across the planet?
Re:Already questioned and answered (Score:5, Informative)
there were already recyclers for these lithium batteries.
Recycling doesn't help much because we are making far more new EVs than the number being retired.
If only 5% of these batteries are being recycled, what's happened to the other 95%?
Many retired EV batteries are repurposed for grid storage, where the reduced energy density is much less important.
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Today, less than 5 percent of all spent lithium-ion batteries are recycled, in large part because the packs are difficult and expensive to dismantle.
.
But here's the real question. If only 5% of these batteries are being recycled, what's happened to the other 95%?
Are you saying the recovery rate will remain 5% even after a very large number of EVs go out of service and their batteries are available as fodder to recyclers? How strongly you actually believe that? Would you be willing to short EVs and battery makers on the belief? Or just gaslight in slashdot and slink back giggling?
Most likely they're being shipped (Score:2)
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But here's the real question. If only 5% of these batteries are being recycled, what's happened to the other 95%? Are they sitting in warehouses collecting dust and/or leaking their contents, or have they been buried in landfills across the planet?
They are sitting in warehouses collecting dust. Lithium ion batteries do not leak. If a lithium battery gets into a state where it would leak, it vents with flame. At that point, the battery is quite literally toast.
The thing is, there aren't that many car batteries being recycled. Tesla, for example, has sold fewer than 2 million cars, I think, and most battery packs last a decade or more. I doubt there are more than double-digit thousand of packs that have failed, and the vast majority of those packs
first reuse, not recycle (Score:2)
Nissan Leaf could probably be the best indicator. The cars are now getting to 12y old, many did not survive that long as their batteries deteriorate quite substantially (owner of 3yr leaf w/ 20k miles and 15% battery degradataion). Apparently, Nissan is reselling these car batteries into home batteries (xStorage products).
So, not recycle but reuse first may be best. I suppose there is no strong "weight" limit for home products so more half-used batteried would still work fine. Not sure is Tesla home product
Re:Already questioned and answered (Score:5, Informative)
That 5% number is total Lithium ion batteries and not just EV batteries. The vast majority of those are going to be cell phones, razors, head phones etc where it really is a pain to extract the battery from the device it's built into. EV batteries are a different beast.
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Re:Already questioned and answered (Score:5, Informative)
Adaptation. (Score:2)
While it's true if we keep up at our current pace we will outstrip our rate of extraction, that's only if we do nothing to increase our rate of extraction. If we just rolled over every time we hit a barrier then we would have stopped using petrol after it stopped bubbling out of the ground. Instead, we identified the problem and adapted by pumping it out of the ground. Then we hit another barrier and adapted by drilling holes into the bottom of the oceans. So if you think humans are just going to give u
Re:Adaptation. (Score:4, Insightful)
if we keep up at our current pace we will outstrip our rate of extraction
Who's this 'we' you speak of, kemosabe? 'We' aren't extracting anything. We buy it all from Chile, Austraila. And China, in the form of finished batteries. If 'we' want EVs, then lithium needs to be made a strategic resource and we need to develop resources and battery production domestically. This should be a precondition on Biden's EV charging network. Mine it, make the batteries. And then charge them.
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Who's this 'we' you speak of, kemosabe?
Humanity, fool. Did you miss the whole "adaptation is humanity's specialty" part?
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I think the history of oil extraction is an illustration of increasingly desperate methods being used to keep the pumps running, after all the easy stuff is gone. The thing is, this adaptation is not really progress. The good old days of easy oil really are gone forever. Fracking will not bring that back. It just slows down the decline of an oil-based economy. Maybe we should take that time to really adapt, so we don't need oil at all. That would be progress.
Back on topic, we should be concerned about over-
There is a lot of it around ... (Score:3)
At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust, lithium is the 25th most abundant element. [wikipedia.org]. The top producing country is Australia, 40,000 tonnes in 2020 [wikipedia.org], about 1/2 of global production.
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I whipped out my field guide to rocks and minerals and looked up spodumene. South Dakota, North Carolina, San Diego California all are listed before Brazil and Australia.
Lets get digging.
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Clinton, Gore, and Babbit nearly destroyed the domestic US mining industry. Seattle wants there to be no mining in Washington State. Both WA senators are against mining and consistently vote against mining.
The problem is political. I used to work in mining. The people listed above killed my career. The College of Mines and Earth Resources at the U of Idaho is gone because of people like them. CSM is still there, but rebuilding the domestic mining education system won't be quick.
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Clinton, Gore,
You've got some derp on your chin, you might want to wipe
Re:There is a lot of it around ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Nope, 33rd most abundant. It is 20 parts per million on average so that part is correct.
[ cut out ]
So that's why Li is rare even though most folks think it is common
So is it now the 33rd most common element (or as your parent claimed 22nd) or is it not?
You make no sense. Obviously being either the 33rd or the 22nd or 25th most common element: is absurdly common aka abundancy.
(because of its place near the top of the periodic table).
Erm, nope? What the funk has the position in the periodic table to do wit
Too little too late. (Score:2)
the industry is likely to ramp up recycling after 2028, when the supply deficit kicks in.
The industry will be far too late to the party because battery recycling is already in the works. [slashdot.org]
FUD. Compare to the alternatives, not perfection. (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if it is exactly as bad as fossil fuels, in every other aspect, there is one criterion where EVs win it hands down. Critical raw materials are not monopolized by unstable oppressive totalitarian theocracies. Lithium is abundant and available everywhere. No one is going to monopolize it.
But it is not as bad as fossil fuels. You burn the hydrocarbon and it is gone. Lithium in batteries, at the end of life, is still in the battery in some other form. At much better concentration than naturally occurring ore deposits. Something like aluminum is recovered and recycled at some phenomenal 60% rate. [lehighcounty.org] Lithium will beat aluminum hands down.
What is mining and making lithium involve? Dissolving salt deposits from dried lake beds, and separating lithium from sodium. Compared to the recovering crude oil and cracking it in refineries, this is child's play. Only the fully paid and bought out "anal"ysts on the pay roll of oil investors tout these things big. Just to get enough time for their clients to unload their oil holdings while the chumps are left holding the bag.
Earlier I used to work up lots of steam railing about the Big Oil and the FUD. Now, I just shrug. The only real damage FUD does is, it makes capital more expensive. Often that alone is enough to cause promising new competing technologies from taking hold. Look what the oil did to metal hydride batteries. [wikipedia.org] All the patents were locked up, bought by oil companies, and they specifically prohibited the use of metal hydride batteries in automobiles.
But ... EVs are no longer small things that can be starved of investments through FUD. There is demand for the battery tech even at prices of 1000 $/kWh for batteries, capacities measured in milli ampere hours, not kilo watt hours, but laptops, camcorders, and cellphone users were willing to pay that price. Created enough demand and profits and set the Battery Moore's Law ( 7 years for half the price double the density) in motion. As of now we are at 100 to 120 $/kWh, and we are looking at 50 to 60 $/kWh by 2028.
At that price, solar+wind+storage is cheaper than running existing, fully paid for, fully amortized gas fired powerplants. Electric cars will be cheaper than gasoline cars. Electric cars do not have weight penalty compared to gas cars when it comes to econoboxes. So you will see cheap electric cars that look land yachts. Without weight penalty they can use heavy steel and simpler manufacturing to meet the safety goals, reducing the structural cost of the car too.
Now I just laugh at the FUD. You can'd do serious damage to EVs anymore, but you can hurt people who trust your analysis. Go ahead Wall Street analysts, its your funeral.
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Honestly, these days listening to people rail on about TSLA being overvalued, EVs not being the future, and coal making a comeback feels pretty much like listening to people ramble on about the Earth being flat.
Well, to be fair, one of those things is not like the others. TSLA's valuation is pretty astronomical; markets are basically betting that Tesla will succeed (first) with fully autonomous vehicles or produce some other novel and world-changing technology, because it simply doesn't make sense that the company is worth more than several of their top competitors combined, not as just an automobile manufacturer and solar technology vendor. Those competitors will require some time to retool and start making good
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EVs beat ICE in another criterion - the raw input source.
ICE requires gas, which requires a source for oil and refineries. Oil sources in "friendly" nations aren't common - US and Canada mostly. Oil producing countries
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They took very high value real estate, corner lots in dense city locations long time ago. But their site can not be used for anything else because of hazardous gasoline tank underground. Converting them to a two or three story building of mixed retail and professional services (law, medical, dental finance, dance/yo
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Electric cars do not have weight penalty compared to gas cars when it comes to econoboxes.
Could you show your working here?
According to the Engineer above, Petrol is roughly 13x less dense than battery, meaning you need 13x as much space to get the same amount of energy. And with that volume comes weight.
Not sure you can understand this. The electric cars use regenerative braking to slow the car down. A pure gasoline car will use friction brakes. Every time you slow down all the kinetic energy built up by burning expensive gasoline is lost. But electric car will convert the kinetic energy to electricity and store it back in the battery. The gasoline econoboxes are tinny and flimsy because the way to reduce wasted kinetic energy is to reduce the mass of the vehicle. Electric cars dont have that limitation.
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Let us compare. (Score:2)
The Economic Times also argues that electric cars and renewable energy "may not be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people.
Last time I checked, electric cars weren't the driving cause of massive ecological disasters like spilling 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the ocean. [wikipedia.org]
Every single day that you drive a petrol car you pollute the atmosphere. It's literally part of it's function and cannot be avoided and it's a huge contributor to climate change. But yes, let's split hairs about ruined patches of Earth. Could it be better, yes. Is it better than oil extraction, yes by millions of times.
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Last time I checked, electric cars weren't the driving cause of massive ecological disasters like spilling 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the ocean.
Because Lithium comes from unicorn farts.
Every single day that you drive a petrol car you pollute the atmosphere. It's literally part of it's function and cannot be avoided
You might want to check how any raw material is mined and transported. Hint, it's not unicorns.
and it's a huge contributor to climate change.
All Transport is about 20% of total emissions, with personal transport at about 4%, and EV life cycle emissions are anywhere from 50%+ of ICE depending on who you believe. So you best case scenario is saving maybe 2% of emissions overall. And that before we include the additional emissions that will be generated by a global infrastructure rollout needed to support all of th
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All Transport is about 20% of total emissions, with personal transport at about 4%,
Transport is about 30% [epa.gov] more importantly personal transport [epa.gov] is more like 60% Where did you get your numbers?
please stop lying (Score:4, Informative)
1. you do not need cobalt for lithium batteries. there are multiple alternative lithium chemistries.
2. you do not need nickel for lithium batteries. there are multiple alternative lithium chemistries.
3. lithium is rare but its also widely distributed. what is rarer than lithium? lead, gold, neon, silver, mercury, gallium, etc, all of which are in common industry use, from electronics to signage to coinage.
4. lithium usage does not require it to be burned, i.e. combined with oxygen and released by the tonne into human living spaces as airborn particulate matter and poison gasses.
5. lithium, unlike gasoline, can be recycled after usage. once we mine enough lithium, we can keep recycling it for generations, just like we do now with steel and aluminum. remember. the energy does not come from lithium, it comes from whatever the electricity grid uses. lithium just carries it. you are not "using up" lithium in a lithium battery car.
6. lithium iron phosphate battery is good for thousands of charge cycles
7. 15 year old Prius batteries are just now being replaced, and recycled, and those were made of nickel metal hydride which has theoretically far fewer cycles than lithium iron phosphate. the newer lithium batteries will outlive the life of the car, if the systems are designed properly.
8. etc etc etc followed by more common sense with details easily verifiable.
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2. You can't backup a large scale grid with batteries, it would take 1000x as much Li as we mine now to do it
3. EVs are nice, but due to the rarity of Li will never be the majority of the fleet
4. I like EVs, they are nice. But they don't scale as a solution and neither do batteries for any known chemistry
5. Lists are fun but formatting is not
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2. You can't backup a large scale grid with batteries, it would take 1000x as much Li as we mine now to do it ...
We "mine" now 1000 times more oil than we mined 150 years ago
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1. If you don't use Co or Ni, you use more Li than otherwise
How much? About 15% for Lithium Iron Phosphate, right? Spare change.
2. You can't backup a large scale grid with batteries, it would take 1000x as much Li as we mine now to do it
So use pumped storage hydro. Been around about 80 years. >80% cycle efficiency. Doesn't use any lithium at all.
3. EVs are nice, but due to the rarity of Li will never be the majority of the fleet
Lithium isn't rare.
TFA is falling into the "proved reserves" trap: prov
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You can't backup a large scale grid with batteries, it would take 1000x as much Li as we mine now to do it
You don't need high energy density Li batteries for static grid backup. Technologies such as NiFe are fine for that. Second-hand Li EV batteries can be used for grid storage, but this is a form of recycling, and does not require Li to be mined.
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Also, don't forget that it will be impossible to ever manufacture more than a few tens of millions of color TVs because the red phosphors needed exist only in limited supply.
(No, this comment is not off-topic. It's an object lesson.)
Re:please stop lying - and we don't need lithium (Score:2)
plenty of alternatives to lithium have been made now. Graphene, zinc and sodium ion to name a few, they are batteries made of elements that are extremely common.
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Duh (Score:2)
Before that, battery makers face the crunch. Same in every industriy now, a big backlog of pentup demand, causing supply chain gaps. If you are an investor, invest in commodities, such as lumber.
Landfills are designed not to leach. Ever. (Score:2)
>Many batteries now end up in landfills, leaching chemicals into the environment...
They may wind up in landfills but, they are not leaching anything, unless something's gone Very Badly Wrong. Sure, the batteries should be recycled, with the slight problem that they can be highly flammable and moderately explosive. Gathering them together in quantity seems like a fun job for someone else.
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Australia wins again (Score:2)
Australia loves digging shit out of the ground and selling it overseas. Don't want coal anymore? Fine, we've also got all the spodumene. Just make sure the governments get the royalty taxes right this time around.
One day, computers will... (Score:2)
...be ten times as powerful, and a hundred times as big... ...and we'll run out of copper.
Why, oh why, do people feel the need to threaten the end of a resource at the very first sign of a very young technology's growth?
I promise you this: in thirty years, there won't be any lithium in batteries anymore.
I don't need any knowledge of battery technology whatsoever to make that promise. I only need to know that lithium batteries are new, batteries as an industry (the current industry) is very new, and that ab
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Charging Them Will Be The Issue (Score:2, Interesting)
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Engineering Explained did a video [youtube.com] on this and pretty much explained why the fears on the grid not being enough for a switch to EVs, was pretty much unfounded fear.
In a nutshell, the grid will expand with demand the same way it has over the past 100 years. 200 Million cars aren't going to come online overnight.
Also, the TX grid isn't representative of the rest of the country, and what happened in TX was largely the fault of not weatherizing -- not because electricity demand shot through the roof.
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Local "mini-grids" are the answers in mane windy or sunny places...and yea these need more energy storage...
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That is a stupid comparison.
The Texas grid literally broke apart. That has nothing to do with connecting/charging some cars.
Other parts of the world with way more people have orders of magnitude poorer electrical grids,
Sorry to rub it into you: there are parts in the world where there is a grid, but not many people are connected, aka have not their own fridge. But their grids are still more robust than your Texas version.
You hardly will find any part in the world where a chain of disasters cut people off
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Texas' grid crashed because their de-regulated privatized system allowed for cutting corners on winterization. Every sort of energy source - wind, solar, natural gas - was built as if deep freezes couldn't happen. It would have run installation costs up just a few percentiles to build to the same standards as northern climates, and skipping that cost lives.
Reasons for optimism (Score:2)
Lithium batteries are highly valuable and highly recyclable. Just that alone means that in the long term, they're a vastly better choice than fossil fuel combustion.
However, right on the same page as the article's display was mention of sodium-ion batteries. Remember John Goodenough's solid-state battery? https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org] After some hitches, it seems to be progressing towards commercialization. https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
There are also some heavy hitters lining up behind solid-st
portable vs grid (Score:2)
Large grid tied batteries shouldn't be lithium.
Nickel Iron batteries are much better suited to stationary, bulky, resilient, long life applications.
The raw materials are plentiful, they are safer to the environment.
We should be aimed at hydrogen carried as ammonia for transport.
Wires, son, wires (Score:2)
Major highways should allow power transfer by induction.