Gold is popular, but lithium is extremely popular. It is not only that the millions of phones, Ipads, and other handheld devices contain the lithium batteries, but our future is also increasingly focused on this natural stuff. It must also be mentioned that medications against (manic) depression are also made of this product. In short, a lot of demand!
Photo CitiFmOnline. Lithium
Lithium: An Amazing Discovery
Lithium is mainly won in the mines of Chile and Bolivia and was discovered in 1817 by the Swede, Johan Arfwedson. When the geologist Gmelin then researched the substance, it turned out to get a particularly red color when heated. Only years later, the raw material became applicable because it was separated from the other minerals by electrolysis. The person who can put this on his name is the American Humphry Davy. From 1923 the lithium was massively produced by a German company.
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Lithium: Its Future
The future is uncertain. Nevertheless, we can estimate that there is a date on certain fossil fuels. Apart from the attack on mother nature, it is also essential to look into the wallet, and of course, the noses all go in the direction of lithium-ion batteries. Electric cars contain thousands of small ion batteries, and popularity will depend on that.
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Lithium Shortage Causes The Price To Explode
The rise of the electric car has a significant impact on the price of lithium used in batteries. This has more than doubled since 2015 due to an imminent production shortage. The expected worldwide breakthrough of the electric car will possibly meet an unexpected threshold. Producers are getting harder and harder to extract enough lithium. As a result, the price of lithium has more than doubled since 2015.
The world is currently on a transition phase, from fossil fuels to environmentally friendly alternatives. As a result, the worldwide demand for lithium, a material that is important for batteries, has been rising for several years. For example, from the expanding smartphone industry, which needs more and more batteries for their billions of phones.
Demand Of Lithium On The Rise
The real demand peak may only come after the expected breakthrough of the electric car. For example, the electric battery in the new Model S from Tesla uses 45 kilograms of lithium carbonate. The problem? Despite rising production, the mining sector is already barely able to follow the rapidly increasing demand for lithium.
Model S, Tesla
A problem that is likely to worsen in the coming years. In China, the ambitious plan is to have no less than 5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020. This alone would require a total production of no less than 330.000 tons of lithium carbonate.
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And then there is Tesla, which builds a 'Gigafactory' in the USA that has to produce a massive amount of batteries. If that soon produces 100 percent, that new Gigafactory would need about 25,000 tons of lithium hydroxide. What, according to calculations by the Bloomberg news agency, would amount to more than 20 percent of the total expected worldwide lithium supply by 2020?
Production Of Lithium
It is, therefore utterly unclear whether the existing miners will be able to increase their production figures sufficiently quickly in the coming years. Even though the places where lithium can be found - unlike oil - are located mainly in stable regions. And also though there are many new mines planned in the coming years.
Lithium mine Chile
Lithium is only widespread in a few places around the world, mainly in Chile, China, Argentina, and Australia. And lithium is not equally natural to produce everywhere. In Australia, it is locked up in rock that has to be heated first, while in the salt, groundwater can be extracted in Chile, which is a lot cheaper.
Lithium: The New Oil Source Could Be Extracted From Seawater. The Juice That Powers Batteries
According to the latest reports, the new production quantities are also massively disappointing. The new mine at Olaroz - the first new lithium mine in two decades in South America - is suffering from a significant production lag, and a lack of funding hampers the start-up of new mines in Argentina, the world's third-largest producer of lithium.
Lithium mine in Argentina
Alternatives And Recycling
According to experts, the threat of supply shortage in the short term may only be solved by looking for alternative raw materials or experimenting with new extraction techniques for lithium. Similar to what happened in the oil industry, when the rising prices suddenly made the extraction of shale oil profitable.
Australia's ‘Lithium Australia’ is experimenting with chemicals to get lithium out of the rock without heating. Recycling will also play a vital role in the future to be able to follow the rapidly increasing lithium demand.
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Lithium From Seawater: Researchers Say It Is Possible
Due to the rise of electric cars, the demand for batteries is rising steadily. This threatens a shortage of essential materials such as lithium. But what if we can extract lithium ions from seawater? Australian and American researchers claim to develop a new desalination technique with which this is possible. New Atlas reports this, following a publication in the scientific journal Science Advances.
Lithium ions
Seawater has all kinds of useful minerals, but until now, it was difficult to extract it. However, due to the new desalination technique, it must be possible to extract lithium ions from seawater. Besides, the technology must make it possible to make drinking water from water from the sea. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are at the basis of the technique: a material consisting of a bond between metal ions and organic ligands, known for its absorbent and catalytic properties. In other words: MOFs are ideally suited for the capture and storage of specific molecules and thus also for filtering seawater.
Researchers at Monash University, CSIRO and the University of Texas developed a membrane-based on MOFs that can extract salt and lithium ions from seawater in a much more efficient way than previously possible.
Batteries
Huanting Wang, one of the authors of the research, said: "Our research can have far-reaching consequences for the mining industry, which is currently using very inefficient methods to extract lithium from a rock."
"The global demand for lithium is very high," he continues. "Our membrane has the potential to extract lithium ions from seawater, an almost infinite and accessible source." When and if this technology can be used, it is as yet unknown. The researchers continue their research, intending to use MOFs better and more efficiently to extract lithium ions from seawater.
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