Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lithium from seawater

Re:Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lit... by endymi0n on Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:56AM (#27412219)

While still significant, the impact of lithium cost on battery cost is commonly far overestimated:

"A 50% increase in lithium prices would for instance increase the battery pack price of a nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) 811 battery by less than 4%." [1]

Nevertheless, together with improvements in (low-cobalt) battery chemistry, this sounds like an important piece of the puzzle.

[1] https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-b...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lit... by tootie on Sunday June 06, 2021 @10:07AM (#27413253)

I'm assuming there's other advantages in terms of supply chain. We can put saltwater lithium extractors anywhere and have them be mostly automated. I don't know much about conventional lithium extraction but mining anything tends to be dirty business for both workers and the environment.

[ Parent | on HN ]