Oceanic sources. The projects getting underway are focusing on brine pools like California’s Salton Sea, but sea water sources of lithium in general are basically indefinite, and can work anywhere with a coastline. Other harvested salts may also produce useful byproducts, and you may even be able to run it as part of a general desalination plant for freshwater.
Seawater contains 230 billion tons of lithium, compared to just 21 million tons in conventional land-based reserves. Lihytech estimates that extracting just 0.1 per cent of all lithium from seawater would be enough to meet humanity’s technology needs.
Lithium is not an infinite resource, no matter where you get it from.
I’d also be hesitant to call it “solved” when as far as I can see there aren’t any of these facilities actually producing lithium to use in batteries yet?
How is lithium mining a solvable problem? Genuinely asking
Oceanic sources. The projects getting underway are focusing on brine pools like California’s Salton Sea, but sea water sources of lithium in general are basically indefinite, and can work anywhere with a coastline. Other harvested salts may also produce useful byproducts, and you may even be able to run it as part of a general desalination plant for freshwater.
Not to mention there are advances with lithium recycling, both in facilities and new processes to make it more efficient.
Also, wouldn’t it be an option at some point to switch to other resources? There is so much money being thrown at alternative battery technology
Now, this is interesting!
Source: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/kaust-spinout-will-extract-lithium-from-seawater/
Lithium is not an infinite resource, no matter where you get it from.
I’d also be hesitant to call it “solved” when as far as I can see there aren’t any of these facilities actually producing lithium to use in batteries yet?
Pop back up a few replies. All the things I mentioned are issues right now, but there’s reason to believe they won’t be forever.