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)
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:
https://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
Lithium seems to amaze us all, from the celestial objects to the miniature Li-ion batteries.
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!
Electric cars will never be more than a local runabout. But more to the question, where in heavens name all these batteries are going be manufactured? No doubt China, who at this moment are building 100 or more coal-fired power stations run on the dirtiest brown coal. China will eventually become the most polluting country on the planet. Energy crisis? What energy crisis? Manufacturers are working their little socks off creating more and more gadgets for the market.
Well, I am doing my bit to help the enviroment but sometimes I think I am wasting my time.
My understanding is that most of the worlds lithium comes from a small part of the USA, where the red earth is very rich in lithium and the conditions for extracting it are good. Earth is dried and ground before being mixed with brine. Then the lithium rich solution is pumped to huge evaperation pools, I think that heat is critical in the process, and that the lithium is removed as a salt and then refined. Although I seem to remember that they can monitor how much lithium is in the batch by testing the conductivity of the solution.