there is an absolutely UNBELIEVABLE amount of lithium in the oceans, so even if this works and thousands of coastal lithium plants get set up and start sucking lithium out of the sea at the same rate as current mining operations on land, it'd still not be enough to harvest even a single percent in a thousand years. there is hundreds of BILLIONS of tons of lithium in the ocean.
the environmental impact would be most felt at various corporations' excess salt dumping grounds, since there will for sure be some who don't realize you could chuck the salt back in the ocean
mining company interests will also downplay and suppress this shit but as soon as someone gets this up and running and starts selling cheap lithium....
there will of course always be the future impact of battery e-waste as batteries end up in more and more things but that's more a problem with consumerism culture rather than lithium extraction
if we absolutely have to get lithium from somewhere, I'd rather it be the ocean
one environmental positive would be the cessation of land based lithium mining. the methods to concentrate lithium out of rock and brine are fucking crazy compared to passing seawater through a membrane with some electricity
I forget what the issue is there other than the obvious one of burning fuel to do that.
Suddenly I'm imagining a network of pipelines that just goes out into the ocean and has a bunch of small holes all along the way, like a massive array of soaker hoses.
I guess the problem with any of this is that there is going to be localized effects wherever you let the briny water out and it's just a question of how widespread and severe we decide to make it. :-/
why couldnt you recombine it with sewer water where it reaches the ocean? So instead of dumping fresh water into the ocean, you dump salt water that matches the salinity of the ocean. Desalinization on one end, and resalinate the waste water that goes back to the ocean, closed loop.
there is an absolutely UNBELIEVABLE amount of lithium in the oceans, so even if this works and thousands of coastal lithium plants get set up and start sucking lithium out of the sea at the same rate as current mining operations on land, it'd still not be enough to harvest even a single percent in a thousand years. there is hundreds of BILLIONS of tons of lithium in the ocean.
the environmental impact would be most felt at various corporations' excess salt dumping grounds, since there will for sure be some who don't realize you could chuck the salt back in the ocean
mining company interests will also downplay and suppress this shit but as soon as someone gets this up and running and starts selling cheap lithium....
there will of course always be the future impact of battery e-waste as batteries end up in more and more things but that's more a problem with consumerism culture rather than lithium extraction
if we absolutely have to get lithium from somewhere, I'd rather it be the ocean
one environmental positive would be the cessation of land based lithium mining. the methods to concentrate lithium out of rock and brine are fucking crazy compared to passing seawater through a membrane with some electricity
If you do, then you create a patch of water that's excessively salty and can't support life. It's a problem with desalination in general.
Idk but is it not possible to just have airplanes spray it over a very large area? Or something like that anyways. Maybe a big tanker ship.
I forget what the issue is there other than the obvious one of burning fuel to do that.
Suddenly I'm imagining a network of pipelines that just goes out into the ocean and has a bunch of small holes all along the way, like a massive array of soaker hoses.
I guess the problem with any of this is that there is going to be localized effects wherever you let the briny water out and it's just a question of how widespread and severe we decide to make it. :-/
Metal/salt is heavy, kinda
How much salt are we talking about?
Just amended it, but we're taking about burning fuel to sustain resource extraction that's supposed to be relatively cleaner.
As for the amount, that's something to look up. Desalination plants probably produce the same amount.
why couldnt you recombine it with sewer water where it reaches the ocean? So instead of dumping fresh water into the ocean, you dump salt water that matches the salinity of the ocean. Desalinization on one end, and resalinate the waste water that goes back to the ocean, closed loop.
One option is killing two birds with one stone and killing the salt mining industry that mines salt for melting ice.
where in the ocean and how would we get it out? Any links? I'd be interested in checking it out!
all of it. seawater contains a little lithium. link is in title of thread