L4sBotGem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won’t Let Them Dig It Up
BlamemetaMakes, lithium mining is incredibly destructive to the enviroment.
Looks like there’s three ways to mine Lithium:
cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/…/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:
medium.com/…/does-the-u-s-have-enough-lithium-to-…
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:
statista.com/…/estimated-lithium-consumption-in-t…
In 2022 the United States consumed an estimated 3000 metric tons of lithium.
So they US just needs to open 187 more desalination plants… and find a place to put all that deadly brine.
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:
wired.com/…/desalination-is-booming-but-what-abou…
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:
pbs.org/…/u-s-seeks-new-lithium-sources-as-demand…
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.
