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Comment by Nimelrian | Hacker News Reader

Last time I checked, the extraction process for lithium, which is needed for the batteries, still has a heavy impact on the environment. This article mentions a cost of 500,000 gallons (almost 2 million litres) of water for a tonne of lithium. [1] Considering that as of now the most lithium is produced in desert regions of Bolivia and Chile, using what little water exists there in the first place may be detrimental to the population of these regions.

Are there any news regarding new, more environment friendly mining processes?

[1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environmen...

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I was just in the desert in Chile rock climbing (Valle de Los Condores), and there were tons of mines nearby. There were rivers and waterfalls everywhere, and a hydroelectric plant. It’s a weird climate, but water is definitely not lacking, even in the desert.

On the other hand, that valley is amazing and should be protected land

Tesla batteries are only ~2% lithium. The vast majority of the battery is nickel, followed by cobalt and aluminum.

Better mining practices are obviously still a good thing, but the environmental impact of lithium mining is pretty small when it comes to Tesla batteries.

extracting fossil fuels now also requires a ton of water.

Water which is permanently and irreversibly contaminated, which is not the case for lithium extraction.

You can still recycle frack water for use over and over again, which is increasingly common. By necessity water recycling has become a big business in the fracking industry.

"Sensing a chance for a big return, private-equity firms have invested more than $500 million into wastewater-disposal companies such as Solaris Water Midstream LLC, WaterBridge Resources LLC, Goodnight Midstream LLC and Oilfield Water Logistics LLC. There are roughly a dozen of these water-focused companies that analysts said could each be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. ... Some companies have a longer-term plan: recycling the wastewater to sell it back to drillers to reuse."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-big-bet-in-fracking-wa...

"The oil and gas industry is finding that less is more in the push to recycle water used in hydraulic fracturing. Slightly dirty water, it seems, does just as good a job as crystal clear when it comes to making an oil or gas well work. ... Until recently, many companies considered recycling too expensive or worried that using anything other than freshwater would reduce well output. But oil and gas companies are increasingly treating and reusing flowback water from wells, which unlike freshwater is very high in salt, with good results."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/analysis-fracking...

On the upside, lithium is easy to recycle.

The fact that this is true, and that simultaneously there isn't a lithium battery recycling industry of any significant size indicates that lithium energy storage is still at an early stage. The prediction that costs will come down and that the economy around lithium batteries will grow to include recycling and other ancillary aspects of the value chain seem likely to be true.

> The fact that this is true, and that simultaneously there isn't a lithium battery recycling industry of any significant size indicates that lithium energy storage is still at an early stage

Where are all these lithium batteries ending up at? Landfills? Many other devices use lithium batteries, namely cellphones.

Small batteries are uneconomical to recycle, and most don't contain dangerous metals or other chemicals. Lead-acid batteries used for starter motors in cars are big, heavy, and contain lead, which you would pay to divert from landfills, even if recycling them isn't profitable on its own.

Lithium batteries from cars and large storage systems will be worth recycling when they are numerous enough. It's unclear if a phone battery will ever be worth recycling.

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