Re:Two new ways of extracting lithium from brine
by jillesvangurp on Friday February 25, 2022 @08:59PM
(#30474644)
Lithium is not expended and recyclable. As long as EVs are a growth market, we'll need to mine more of it of course but at some point, the vast majority will come from recycled batteries.
The reason recycling lithium is so attractive is that 1) it is valuable because it is expensive to extract from the typically very low concentrations that exist in natural deposits. and 2) expended lithium batteries have orders of magnitude higher concentrations of it than exist in nature.
You'd be a fool to dump it in a landfill. For reference, lead, which is far less valuable is also typically recycled from the batteries in scrapped cars. Depleted lead batteries are valuable enough that they are not dumped in landfills. The current price is about 74$/kg, up lately by about 7x from 10$. A 73kwh Tesla battery would contain about 63 kilos of lithium. That's about 5000$ or more than a lot of second hand cars. Even at 10$, we're still talking well over 700$. A depleted lead battery would be closer to 5$. Those are recycled as well.
Regardless, there's a lot of lithium out there in nature. More than enough. There is no shortage just scaling challenges. Technical improvements like described in the article make it cheaper and less energy intensive to extract lithium. As you note, there's huge demand for EVs and that will keep prices for lithium high for some time to come. Companies working on extraction and recycling technology, have a lot of growth opportunities. They are super hot from an investor perspective and there are multiple very well funded companies working in this space already.
Long term, that makes lithium super sustainable. Short term, it just means we'll expend a lot of energy (increasingly of the renewable type) and water to get it. But compare that to extracting oil and turning it into petrol. That too is expensive and 100% of it is expended. Recycling burned gasoline/diesel is not a thing. That's not sustainable at all.
The reason recycling lithium is so attractive is that 1) it is valuable because it is expensive to extract from the typically very low concentrations that exist in natural deposits. and 2) expended lithium batteries have orders of magnitude higher concentrations of it than exist in nature.
You'd be a fool to dump it in a landfill. For reference, lead, which is far less valuable is also typically recycled from the batteries in scrapped cars. Depleted lead batteries are valuable enough that they are not dumped in landfills. The current price is about 74$/kg, up lately by about 7x from 10$. A 73kwh Tesla battery would contain about 63 kilos of lithium. That's about 5000$ or more than a lot of second hand cars. Even at 10$, we're still talking well over 700$. A depleted lead battery would be closer to 5$. Those are recycled as well.
Regardless, there's a lot of lithium out there in nature. More than enough. There is no shortage just scaling challenges. Technical improvements like described in the article make it cheaper and less energy intensive to extract lithium. As you note, there's huge demand for EVs and that will keep prices for lithium high for some time to come. Companies working on extraction and recycling technology, have a lot of growth opportunities. They are super hot from an investor perspective and there are multiple very well funded companies working in this space already.
Long term, that makes lithium super sustainable. Short term, it just means we'll expend a lot of energy (increasingly of the renewable type) and water to get it. But compare that to extracting oil and turning it into petrol. That too is expensive and 100% of it is expended. Recycling burned gasoline/diesel is not a thing. That's not sustainable at all.