Where does lithium come from?
How many lithium-ion batteries do you own? Let me see, I have one mobile/cell phone, one laptop, two digital cameras and one brick-like MP3 player (not to mention several old phones gathering dust somewhere) - they're all rechargable, so the chances are they're powered by lithium-ion batteries. So that's at least 5. Multiply that by everyone in the developed world and you've got a lot of lithium.
But where does all that lithium come from? I must confess to having no idea. Then I came across the following article in The Daily Mail: In search of Lithium: The battle for the 3rd element. A lot of it is under a desert in Bolivia, and if we're all "going to be driving electric cars in the future" (or, more realistically, using a lot more Li-ion batteries generally), it's going to have to mined.
Although I can't believe I'm linking to Daily Mail story in a serious way, the article is pretty good, and worth looking at the for the dramatic desert pictures alone. I shall also (grudgingly) applaud them for (a) covering science in this way and (b) explaining how lithium-ion batteries work - with a graphic.
Neil
Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)
Comments
Neil
it is a real concern, as also the New York Times (the newspaper I frequent more often than the DM...) wrote back in February:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/americas/03lithium.html
It might change the economics of electrical cars entirely. The other issue is where the electricity comes from. China for example has a large drive for electric cars, but what kind of power plants are the building? Mostly coal. So there you have it...
Joerg
Posted by: Joerg Heber | April 8, 2009 12:25 PM
Lithium seems to amaze us all, from the celestial objects to the miniature Li-ion batteries.
Posted by: Amiya Sarkar | April 9, 2009 04:37 PM
Yes, it's a good piece of journalism, even if you have to remind yourself in many places that the author's "lithium" actually refers to lithium chloride. A similar article appeared in the New York Times a couple of months ago, but the photos in the Daily Mail article are even better!
Posted by: Physchim62 | April 20, 2009 10:24 AM