It's made of sodium and iron, which together make up about 8% of the earth's crust, so yes, they chemistry is made of really common materials. By contrast lithium makes up about 0.002%.
Misleading way of looking at it. Lithium and sodium are not the major cost (or weight, or volume) inputs to making batteries, and crustal occurrence is very distantly related to cost. We mine things from places with 100x-1mx higher concentrations than natural. Water concentrates lithium into brines and clays for us. Sodium's low density causes it to create massive domes underground that are extremely recoverable. In contrast many metals aren't naturally concentrated.
Lithium batteries aren't made of lithium. They're made of nickel- or iron, or manganese, or cobalt. In iron and manganese batteries the #1 price factor is the manufacturing- the energy, solvents, and machinery used to deposit materials onto film.
Likewise sodium batteries are not made of sodium. There's 13x more iron in them than sodium. There may also be large amounts of manganese or vanadium. The cost of manufacturing is also higher per kWh.
Lithium batteries are made of lithium to a point that there is a lithium supply bottleneck if we want to use lithium-ion batteries as the base chemistry for the green transition.
It will take time to mass produce things regardless, but I imagine Sodium has far fewer bottlenecks.
The lithium bottleneck idea comes from people who go "looking at the current lithium supply we would run short if we instantly started producing 10x as many batteries as we do today", completely ignoring how markets work.
It's great if we can get a chemistry that avoids the need for lithium, but it won't be a showstopper if we don't.
Lithium is still part of the cost of producing batteries and their production still requires a large number of lithium mining operations. Having a ton of lithium mines around isn't exactly what's destroying the planet, but having fewer would be more better.
This sort of misses the point of sodium ion batteries though, no? One of the main objections to lithium ion batteries is the need for cobalt because of how it's sourced through "artisanal mining" in Africa.
Northvolt’s original factory in Skellefteå is near (well, ‘Arctic near’: 460 km along an existing rail line) Kiruna, one of the largest Iron mines in the world, so that’s one of the two material supply safe.
Industrial Sodium is made with electrolysis of sea salt; the factory is next to the Gulf of Bothany and has abundant (wind and hydro) power, so the other material supply is safe.
It wasn’t hard anywhere, but it’s straightforward in that particular case.
This got me thinking - the salinity of the water in the bothnian bay is very low (seems to be about 1/10th of ocean water). Wouldn't that effect electrolysis?
At least half of all NaCl that's used world wide is mined from salt mines. For many places in the world it's not feasible to rely on solar evaporation of sea water. Using other energy sources to evaporate sea salt is not cost effective and many places have large salt deposits.
desalination wastewater contains a number of other chemicals used in the desalination process (e.g. pH adjusters, coagulants and flocculants, antiscalants, dispersants, biocides, and reducing chemicals)
I mean... pH adjusters would definitely significantly alter things. The other major problem (I'd guess) is just the health implications of working with toxic wastewater. Is it safe?
For context, as of 2019, we produced enough of this "brine" to cover Florida with 30 centimeters of brine every year. That means, as a whole, desalination plants actually produce even more toxic wastewater than they do clean drinking water.
As a result figuring out ways we could utilize this _product_ ("byproduct" feels like the wrong term here considering it's the primary thing produced) is a major area of interest
I looked up your claim that desalination plants produce "toxic wastewater" and I found nothing to support it. The output appears to be simple concentrated ocean water, and that's it.
I'm more interested in what you possibly looked up that made it hard to find...
> Furthermore, chemicals such as biocides, surface−active agents, anti-scale additives, and solid residues from filter backflushing may be present in the effluent discharge on a continuous or periodic basis, posing a risk to the environment
> Brine effluents from RO desalination plants not only have a high salt content but typically also contain compounds from the desalination process, such as phosphonate-based antiscalants and ferric (or alum) sulphate-based coagulants
> The super-salty substance is made even more toxic by the chemicals used in the desalination process, researchers reported in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
> Copper and chlorine, for example, are both commonly used.
Sure but it's alternative uses were already known. It just so happened that a world-altering invention (the consumer automobile) came along to dramatically raise already existing demand for it. There is currently no demand/use for desalination brine. For every "this byproduct is actually useful" story there's likely 10 byproducts that simply stay byproducts. Still, it's urgent we figure out something to do with it since it's damaging our ocean ecosystems
Go from the super high salinity brine through to crude salt, then chloralkali process to get sodium (which can be cleaned up) and chlorine gas (industrially useful).
Lithium is element #3 on the periodic table so it's very simple and should be universally abundant. Literally in the universe, unfortunately not on earth.
That’s not how it works! Lithium is a fuel that gets used up by stars immediately whenever it might be produced in trace amounts. Unlike hydrogen, lithium wasn’t produced in the Big Bang. So most of the lithium that remains in the universe is produced outside of the cores of stars through the interaction of cosmic rays with other matter. Needless to say, that’s not a very common interaction (relatively speaking).
Now if you look at how larger stars operate (the CNO cycle [1]) you’ll see that it matches up with the higher relative abundance of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in the universe. Lithium, beryllium, and boron get “skipped over” in a sense.
Furthermore, if you look at a graph of the relative abundance of all elements, you’ll note that odd-numbered elements are less abundant than even (with the exceptions of hydrogen and beryllium). This is called the Oddo-Harkins rule [2] and it may also be playing a role.
Edit: I should also add that the third major process in stars, triple-α [3], involves the fusion of three helium-4 nuclei into one carbon-12 nucleus. This occurs in older stars that have exhausted most of their hydrogen fuel and so have built up a large core of “inert” helium. When their outward pressure from hydrogen fusion is no longer high enough to withstand gravity, they reach the much higher pressures and temperatures needed for triple-α fusion. Unfortunately for the lithium industry, there’s no chance of producing lithium this way since it is skipped over on the way to carbon.
This stinks of bad science. All of the observations come from stars. "Older stars seem to have less lithium than they should, and some younger stars have much more."
"BBC Science Focus wrote in 2023 that "recent research seems to completely discount" such theories; the magazine held that mainstream lithium nucleosynthesis calculations are probably correct."
Helium is no 2 , and that too is pretty scarce on earth , but again helium is a very light gas and simply shoots out of the atmosphere eventually,
Why is lithium rare
You cannot estimate abundance by atomic number like that. The big bang produced mostly hydrogen and helium, with traces of lithium and beryllium. The elements heavier than that are mostly produced by stars, and the physics of fusion have a massive impact on what elements, specifically, get made. Free protons join together to become helium-4 much more readily than any other fusion process, meaning that by the time heavier things start forming, the raw material is entirely ⁴He.
This means that things that are easily made of ⁴He are dramatically more common than anything else, making the most common isotopes after ⁴He oxygen-16 (4 alphas), carbon-12 (3 alphas, less common than oxygen because it's less stable and easily picks up another alpha), neon-20 (5 alphas), and iron-56 (14 alphas to nickel-56 which immediately decays twice through β+ to produce ⁵⁶Fe). Iron is so high up above all the other intermediate steps, because it's the last stop: In heavy enough stars, the entire core converts to iron, and reactions past that are energy-consuming, not energy-producing, so after that the star collapses.
Lithium is not on any of the major stellar nucleosynthesis pathways, which means it's only produced by exceptional processes, making it roughly as universally abundant as the other stuff that is made by exceptional processes, like scandium or gallium or zirconium. But none of that matters, because:
Lithium is abundant and easy to extract in the earth's crust.
While there's not that much of it up there, there's plenty easy to extract down here, because it's so light and likes forming light compounds, meaning that a huge proportion of all the lithium of all the rocks that came together to form the earth is reachable to us. Lithium is not rare. Any statement about lithium batteries that bemoans the scarcity of lithium is doubly confused: Firstly, because lithium is simply not scarce. Secondly, because lithium is such a tiny portion of the battery, that despite being in the name, only a small fraction of the materials cost is lithium.
Lithium price has had a few big spikes because mining is a very high-capital industry where spinning up projects is measured in years, if not decades, and we suddenly started using a lot more lithium in ~2010. Accordingly, the price has spiked from the ~$5k per ton (which is roughly in the same ballpark typical cost of extraction, where any abundant mineral prices end up at), to the heights of $37k per ton last year. Even at this high price, lithium was not even the most expensive material component in most lithium batteries, because typically only 1-3% of the battery's weight is lithium.
But these prices won't last, because having the price of a commodity so high above the cost of extraction means that new mining projects are spinning up.
Five mineral operations in Australia, two brine operations each in Argentina and Chile, and two brine and one mineral operation in China accounted for the majority of world lithium production.
Owing to overproduction and decreased prices, several established lithium operations postponed capacity expansion plans. Junior mining operations in Australia and Canada ceased production altogether.
USGS (2023):
Six mineral operations in Australia, one mineral tailings operation in Brazil, two brine operations each in Argentina and Chile, and three mineral and two brine operations in China accounted for the majority of world lithium production.
Additionally, smaller operations in Brazil, Canada, China, Portugal, the United States, and Zimbabwe also contributed to world lithium production.
Owing to the rapid increase in demand and prices of lithium in 2022, established lithium operations worldwide increased or were in the process of increasing production capacity.
Lithium supply security has become a top priority for technology companies in Asia, Europe, and North America. Strategic alliances and joint ventures among technology companies and exploration companies continued to be established to ensure a reliable, diversified supply of lithium for battery suppliers and vehicle manufacturers. Brine-based lithium sources were in various stages of development or exploration in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, China, and the United States; mineral-based lithium sources were in various stages of development or exploration in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Congo (Kinshasa), Czechia, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, the United States, and Zimbabwe; lithium-clay sources were in various stages of development or exploration in Mexico and the United States.
Lithium is extremely abundant on earth. Unless we start launching it into space, or start building up after covering the surface with buildings and roads, we’re not going to run out.
Lithium production capacity is scarce however, since it’s a mostly useless element unless you’re building batteries out of it.
Anyway, once cities realize that they need to stop taking water from rivers, we should be able to skim quite a bit of
lithium from desalination plant waste water.
> the chemistry is made of really common materials
I don't want to sound like a conspiray theorist, but something tells me the really big actors (like states) only want materials that they can control the suply of.
It won't work as long as there's a roughly equal alternative that's cheaper/easier to produce. Free market will win here.
There's no way one state can force another state (aside from war) to manufacture something a particular way. It's like if I controlled the world's timber supply and said Canada must produce houses out of timber and not, say, concrete. Canada's gonna go produce using concrete unless I somehow make my timber price competitive.
> It's like if I controlled the world's timber supply and said Canada must produce houses out of timber
This is quite naive - in fact we do this all the time
* IMF provides loans to developing countries on the condition that they dont have 'socialist' policies
* EU bailouts for Greece/aspain/etc. was given on the condition of sale of state assets and doing other things
* The worlds ship insurance industry is run in London. Nuclear powered contsiner ships are faster, cheaper, and better in every way. Good luck insuring them. Running them without insurance is. illegal
*'non-tariff barriers' - i.e. free trade negotiations - are all about aligning countries on how they manufacture/insure/regulate things like cars. Guess which econony gets the bigger say.
Russia was forced to adopt Eu standards for petrol quality and engine emissions standards in 2,000's and they still follow
IMF provides loans and expects them to be repaid, having rules on government spending attached to the loans is... reasonable. Not to mention, that IMF loans are typically bailouts of governments that overspent.
Same goes with the EU bailouts, but PIGS countries were already in a compact with the rest of the Eurozone. Not to mention, that governments should not own things that can go bust and drag a budget under water.
As shown lately with Russian oil sales - it's absolutely possible to insure ships somewhere else, other than Lloyd's of London.
China already has GWH scale sodium battery plants. So if THEY have been trying to suppress it THEY aren't doing very well.
This announcement is about an improvement in energy density made possible by $Bs being invested to allow sodium batteries to become more competitive with lithium.
There are also other battery chemistries being rolled out. Iron based ones seem particularly promising for stationary storage.
That's actually the official policy in many cases. For instance, the EU is funding research in li-ion recycling so that it could create a "circular economy" with imports only there to make up for material lost during processing, as e.g. the car market is largely saturated, so the expectation is that demand won't grow.
> It's just common sense for a country/group of countries.
Conspiracies are just common sense for a group of people; but that's exactly my point. A group doesn't have to meet at night by the torch light in black robes and decide upon secretive actions to further their own interests.
NATO doesn't do that. The US can do that alone, and sometimes brings the UK with it, which might look similar but is really different in important ways.
Merkel, Erdogan and KSA wanted it and expected their battle hymn of "Onward Christian Soldiers" to carry the day. Thanks not, Obama. She ran away from any personal nation building but at least didn't run away from picking up the mess she helped create.
Only Afghanistan and Libya can be argued to have been some sort of cover for resource extraction... and both operations have ended. Plus the Libyan intervention was very short.
Any country without an expeditionary military force (about 187 of them) likes the resources they have. Ab abundant is great unless you have a known military adversary with extra-territorial ambition (that’s three countries).
Transistors are the most valuable thing we can produce per kilogram and sell easily. We had many processes over the years, but we settled on making them from sillicon. I.e. sand.
They're probably referencing Iraq and I'm not sure it was raw resource extraction as it was so much removal of a competitor (whatever the name of the Iraqi state oil company was) and more than that, enabling sales of equipment, consulting, etc. It wasn't as simple as some 1800s colonialism, it was advanced wealth extraction worthy of the 21st century.
Ok. So the US spent $3 trillion[0] on a war in Iraq to get some consulting contracts from a country with a GDP of $36 billion[1]? And didn't invade Saudi Arabia, which actually has oil? How much wealth do you estimate the US extacted from the war?
While I don't lend credence to it being that simple, it's worth noting that the people making that profit aren't the ones paying for it, and the ones paying for it aren't using their own money.
>The Europeans were starting to loosen Iraqi oil sanctions
Any links I can read about this? I'm open to the idea that suppressing Iraq's oil industry was the main objective of the war. I don't like claims about "the US's quest to take other nations oil" being that it never happened either in Iraq or even Iran. At least when I ask for a source I can never get one. To me the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were mainly about projecting power, not oil. Certainly not Afghanistan because there is little to no oil there in the first place. Even regarding Iraq it is OPEC that sets the price and I doubt they would let Iraq greatly reduce the market price. It would have to be as you say: people with connections using the US's power to suppress competition. Many people online, however, seem to have the idea that US foriegn policy dictates collecting oil and that the US is stealing trillions of dollars of oil from various third world countries. I think the US gains a lot more from war to project power. Iraq for the most part today is a US ally. And if we are looking for people who would gain from the war it would more likely be Lockheed than Exxon. Lastly, there is no reason to say that US oil companies staged the war exclusively. It is possible that eg. SA were also involved or the main initiators.
I'm sorry, but Saudis were the biggest losers in removing Saddam.
Removal of Saddam removed one of the biggest adversaries of Iran. Now Iranian Revolutionary Guard can freely move from Tehran to Beirut and support the rebels in Yemen.
>Wasn't Iraq about to switch away from trading the oil in USD ?
I don't know. Do you have a source for that claim? Preferably from before the war started. (Later is fine too.)
>But let me flip your argument -- why did the US invade Iraq?
This doesn't flip the argument. That would only be the case if not being able to explain the war meant that it therefore was started for oil. These are not two sides of a coin. Simmilarly I wouldn't say that if we can't explain Iraq then it must have been to find aliens.
>The US has/had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia was in the US's pocket at that time
And what percent of the oil profits did the US get? If the claim is that the US will invade for oil then being in the US's pocket, whatever that means, is irrelevant. But I think you answered your own question here. The US likes having countries "in it's pocket." It wants to station troops in other countries. These are legitimate -- here I don't reffer to moral legitimacy -- national objectives. Skimming contracts or suppressing oil fields is not a legitimate national objective. If there are groups in the US (eg. Exxon) that are so powerfull they can make the US go to war without a single national objective achieved then they could simply take the $3 trillion directly. I think your point about the petrodollar is interesting, although I'd like to see some more evidence.
