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Re:Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ... by jandrewrogers on Sunday September 10, 2023 @02:00AM (#37453302)
Efficiency for industrial chemistry is massively dependent on the processes being continuous. The processes often don’t work, or work poorly, until you reach a stable equilibrium, which can take many hours. An enormous amount of effort is expended to ensure this in real industrial processes. Otherwise, you are just burning resources for negligible output.

The idea that we’ll do industrial chemistry with intermittent energy surpluses is unrealistic unless we are okay with yield per unit of energy being very poor relative to continuous processes.

Re:Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ... by iancmceachern on Sunday September 10, 2023 @03:43AM (#37453720)
Exactly. Chemistry can be done that way, in batches. Chemical engineering cannot, it's not a batch process, it's all rate stuff.
Re:Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ... by Symbiote on Sunday September 10, 2023 @11:05AM (#37456493)
Aluminium smelters already adjust their electricity consumption throughout the day to take advantage of changing power prices.