Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found
Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found
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61 comments
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Better than exploiting other countries, I suppose. But I think Lithium is a transitional battery source, and that we will move to much more efficient designs within a decade.
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Not a chance.
Right now we’re using lithium-ion. In maybe a decade we’ll move to lithium-sulphide, and in perhaps 25 years we might see lithium-oxygen.
Either way, lithium is all you’ll see in commercially viable batteries for the next 50 years because lithium as an anode is as good as it gets on the Table of Elements.
Yes, you’ll see 100 reports per year about new battery tech but none of them will ever be scalable, safe enough, or cheap enough.
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I mean, this kinda only applies to devices that need the highest energy density.
For situations where space isn't much of an issue, it can make more sense to use other forms of batteries that are cheaper per MWh. I agree Li-ion won't be replaced in phones etc. but for some applications that are stationary, it can make commercial sense to use something else.
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We'll be moving bulk storage to molten sodium over the next 3 decades, lithium will be for high density applications, but they're working on sodium-air designs because the density is even higher than lion.
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Lithium is the most energy dense so most suitable for private transport but I think industrial and domestic storage won't be dominated by lithium in a decade or 2
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You mean I won't be running my car off bacteria?!
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If you want to do something like that, just get a car with a diesel engine and run biodiesel in it. No need to wait for new tech; an old '90s or early-2000s VW TDI (for example) is perfectly suitable.
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It was a joke. Every so often some article comes out about how scientists have made bio-batteries. They never go anywhere.
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Yeah, I get it.
You know what's not a joke, though? Biodiesel. People talk about how we need new car technology to stop global warming, but my car was carbon-neutral a decade ago...
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There was never enough source to scale up very far. People need to eat a lot more fried food to create several orders of magnitude more used cooking oil
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It's a good part of the solution, along with EVs and the biggie, which is to fix the zoning code so that cities can be built with walkable density and people don't have to drive as much in the first place.
Also, there are more waste feedstocks available than just used vegetable oil. For example, the biodiesel I'd get was made from rendered chicken fat. (I use past tense, by the way, only because my car has been sitting for longer than I care to admit because I haven't finished replacing the transmission. The TDI engine running on biodiesel is great, but sadly, the rest of the car is still a VW...)
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CATL is beginning mass production of sodium-ion batteries this year.
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Were still going to need lithium batteries for longer ranges for quite awhile.
Sodium Ion/LFP can get up to 160wh/kg right now, which is fine for things like the standard range cars or commuter cars, but when you want the longer range vehicles they're to big/heavy compared to the 250-300wh/kg of the lithium ion batteries using nickle.
I'm sure they'll keep improving them, but so will the lithium ion ones. Maybe LFP/Sodium make it to 250, but nickle make it to 400-450.
Then you gotta consider weight differences and what not and the impact on efficiency so it's not neccesarily end game if they reach the mid 200's.
I'm super excited to see the continued improvements in these lower power density batteries though. They're going to make the transition a lot easier as not everyone will want a longer range vehicle, and they're more sustainable.
And of course, for storage where density doesn't matter, they're amazing.
Edit: Oh and once we get into the cost effective 400-450+ range, we can start transitioning flight as well, so we'll still need it then as well.
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There are a few promising leads in sodium, graphene, and liquid hydrogen batteries. And yeah that includes salt batteries as well
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61 comments