GM has signed an agreement to extract lithium from beneath the Salton Sea | Hacker News Reader

GM has signed an agreement to extract lithium from beneath the Salton Sea

autoweek.com

339 pointstoomanyrichies180 comments

The Salton Sea is already a man made disaster deep into ecological collapse. Even if they do it terribly, I doubt they'll make anything worse. It's also a region with no economic future, so hopefully this brings some jobs. This will be interesting to watch, I'm hopeful.

HoldMyCarbonCredits while we make the Salton Sea a SuperFund-Site! [0]

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Anyone know how recoverable Lithium is from Lithium batts? Does the Lithium degrade/denature/deconstruct over time in all lithium batteries? How bad for the environment is all the Lithium we are throwing out with all these used up batteries?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites

There is only a tiny bit of lithium in lithium batteries, afaik.

Lithium is everywhere, especially in salt lakes. A long time ago I met someone whose family ran a mineral extraction company, of which there are many around Salt Lake City. They take the lake water and evaporate it. The main non-water ingredient in the concentrated brine was lithium.

(Though the guy was drinking the stuff as a supplement, which probably affected his personality a bit)

That tidbit about drinking it is the most interesting part of this whole thread!

Are they the same lithium salts that are prescribed as medication for certain psychological disorders?

Yup!

Dunno if modern medications may also include other active-ingredients to compliment lithium, but lithium itself is pretty much the same thing as sodium or potassium in terms of its simplicity as a chemical species.

Since lithium has a +1 charge as a cation (positively charged ion) in salt, it needs to be balanced with an anion (negatively charged ion), so the exact salt can vary in solid-form. But once it dissolves in water, such as in the body, then it's not really bound to the anion anymore and so the exact anion it was originally ingested with isn't particularly important.

Apparently some people used to drink [mineral water with lithium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithia_water).

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_(medication)

I grew up in Lithia Springs. They still bottle and sell the water from the spring.

No, the drug lithium carbonate is just that. It’s literally a powder that comes in a capsule.

lithium recovery: https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3421...

Seems possible; not sure of economic value at this particular point in history. There's a bunch of recent headlines about trivial extraction of lithium from seawater, so might get less economically feasible if those techs pan out. OTOH, even if it's not obviously worth it, you could try burying it all in one place and then 'mine' it once the economics swing towards recovery.

Elements tend to not degrade quickly outside of nuclear reactors as a general rule.

The first thing recovered from salvaged batteries will be the cobalt and similar materials in the electrodes. Those are much less plentiful than lithium.

I had go take a road trip to see for myself. Nearby Slab City is a nightmare, but Salton Sea wasn't too bad for a salt lake in the desert. There are picnic tables and campsites. There's a palm tree farm on the north end. In a little town on the water's edge, I found the sign for the the old Bombay Beach Club: https://imgur.com/a/eifJkzB

Isn't Slab City just a place that people go because they can squat there and no one cares?

It is romanticized among other things.

There are definitely addicts out there but I went with my family and met some nice people a few years ago. The art installation was interesting and the hippies running the library gave my kid a book. I wouldn't want to live out there for sure though.

There are a lot of artists, and they even have a "club" made up of old abandoned couches where they have occasional outdoor concerts. It's pretty wild.

I drove around Slab City so that I could see Salvation Mountain. It was... interesting.

Bombay Beach was scary and depressing.

The smell was fine when I was there but there are frequent massive fish die offs.

Something has to be done about it though. If it dries up (irrigation runoff feeds the lake but irrigation is getting more efficient causing less runoff) then the dry lake bed will blow over Palm Springs and other towns in the area. It's full of toxic dust now.

Migrating birds also use it as a stopover point because we have gotten rid of so many natural wetlands.

I had the opposite experience. I'm normally the kind of person who likes visiting unusual places, but I found nothing appealing about the Salton Sea. The smell was horrendous, there were flies and bees everywhere, and the rural decay wasn't really as impressive as in those artsy HDR photos. It's a horrible place that I vowed never to return to.

> there were flies and bees everywhere

That's a good thing

We sat down at a table to eat breakfast there during our road trip and within 10 minutes we were swarmed with a horde of disgusting flies. The entire shore was littered with bones from dead fish. The area looks quite ok from the confines of an air conditioned vehicle.

"Disgusting flies"? That's pretty specieist...

You're just passing through where they LIVE

I think it depends on the time of year. For example, when I drove to Alaska in the spring, I found the wilderness beautiful, but the locals told me if I had come in the summer I would have been assaulted by swarms of giant mosquitos.

Sounds like the locals really liked you. :)

I don't think they were lying because I saw joke signs declaring the giant mosquito as the Alaska state bird

Not just mosquitoes, black flies and horse flies too. I hate fly bites personally. They hurt and they bleed sometimes and flies will pursue you relentlessly. Even if you go into water, they'll just sit and wait for you to resurface.

That’s what makes it so appealing to me. It was one of the most depressing places I’ve visited. Slab City is even worse. It blew away my expectations. I thought the documentaries and coverage of it were overblown, but no, that place is more fucked up than I ever imagined.

I love exploring around the Salton Sea because it feels like a post-apocalyptic version of the US. You're definitely not going for the aesthetics.

Slab City is it's own thing. It was probably a nightmare because they are not trying to appeal to you... or anyone

I think it's the only semilegal squatting village in California

Awesome documentary on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_%26_Pleasures_on_the_S...

John Waters narrating.

I took my family there in a trip we also saw Las Vegas, the Mt Palomar telescope, LA tar pits, and Palm Springs. It is too disgusting to be educational. At least when we went it stank to high heaven and we ended up with rotting fish flesh all over our pants. The dumb dog liked it. Everyone else uses it as a cautionary tale about letting me chose destinations for vacation. Getting 10x existing Lithium production would be great use of it.

There are some extremely good date palm farms north of it. It you like figs and dates, check them out.

except the dog. truly our best friend. pretended to like even that awful place. :)

She is a very sweet dog tho not very good signal for will humans like something.

My curiosity is getting the better of me, why would you choose the Salton Sea as a vacation destination?

It is the second largest lake in California. I was new to California and just looking for interesting things. My quick googling was clearly insufficient. Tho it was interesting in some sense. Also it’s kind of in the area of the other places that were ok. Tar pits are awesome. Mt Palomar very cool. Las Vegas unique and notable if not actually my cup of tea.

Just west of it is Ocotillo Wells. You can rent a quad bike and tour around it for an afternoon. There is a fossil reef (oyster shells), an odd rock formation called the pumpkin patch, some mud with mysterious subterranean gas that bubbles out, and general desert scenery. A little further west is Anza Borrega. More desert, but there is a nice hike through the desert to a palm tree oasis which just sort of pops up out of nowhere. Outside the town are inexplicable (unless you read about it) huge steel sculptures.

Historically, it was a pretty popular vacation destination.

> In the 1950s and into the 1960s, the communities expanded as the area's reputation as a resort destination and sport fishery grew.[18] Hotels and yacht clubs were built on the shore along with homes and schools.[19] Resorts in communities like Bombay Beach hosted entertainers such as Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys and Bing Crosby.[20] Yacht clubs held parties at night and golf courses provided recreation.[19] Many people came for boating activities such as water skiing and fishing as stocked fish proliferated.[21] Lakeshore communities grew as vacation homes were built.[15] More than 1.5 million visitors visited annually at the peak.[22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea#Agriculture,_touris...

Was there ever any hope that the environment was sustainable or was it basically a real estate pump and dump?

The future could be calculated from a salinity chart and still people bought and sold expensive homes.

It could've lasted much longer if agriculture runoff hadn't poisoned the lake and killed all the fish. It would've lasted until enough evaporation had taken place to concentrate the salts and kill the fish.

I had my family stop by a few years ago because I had heard about it in a What-If? https://what-if.xkcd.com/152/

I wouldn't recommend it. The route we took was through a residential area. The neighbors did not seem like they wanted us to be there. We went to the water's edge, smelled the "objectionable," "noxious," "unique," and "pervasive" odor (as described by the US Geological Survey), looked at the shitty beach, and left. There's not much to do.

That's because it's slum tourism and residents hate being the unwilling cast of a sideshow attraction. "Oh honey, look at the locals inhaling the toxic plume wafting off this mess we can safely leave behind forever in a few minutes. Say cheese!"

There's a neighborhood by me which has earned a similar reputation and the residents have been known to tell slum tourists to leave.

Its gross. Don't do that.

Yeah, most people are there because they grew up there and its their home and most of them are too broke to leave. It's pretty gross. If you want to support the locals, go buy a few dates and gas.

I disagree. People who don't go to see the Salton Sea and its consequences are free to ignore it. But seeing it will put an likely-indelible memory in your head that will stick with you, and might give you some much-needed context about why people are fighting to do something about it.

The key of course, is to travel with respect. Bombay Beach is probably not a place for casual selfies and party times.

There is still beauty there, for people who can look past the unpleasant. A state visitor center with the whole wild history of the place. Beaches made out of pulverized tilapia bone and shell. Fields of obsidian. The zonked-out but earnest spirituality of Salvation Mountain. Date shakes from Westmorland. Endless sun.

I agree. I didn’t realize before we made the stop that there were still people living there. It felt gross for all the reasons you describe, plus the Salton air.

For the same reasons people may enjoy playing Fallout 4.

OP replied with their reason, but I personally have visited the Salton Sea numerous times when in southern California. I find it truly fascinating. It has a very post-apocolyptic feel. From an ecological perspective it occupies a very unique niche. It's 90 miles form the nearest ocean and has large populations of oceanic birds such as Brown Pelicans.

Post apocalyptic is right. When we drove by it we also encountered a number of large ATV groups driving around, mad max style

For me, it would be because of a great ("great" as in Ed Wood style film-making) movie "The Monster that Challenged the World" (even the title seems low budget).

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050722/

tl;dr "An earthquake in the Salton Sea unleashes a horde of prehistoric mollusk monsters. Discovering the creatures, a Naval officer and several scientists attempt to stop the monsters, but they escape into the canal system of the California's Imperial Valley and terrorize the populace"

Fitting in a thread about a documentary narrated by John ‘Pink Flamingoes’ Waters

Nearby Slab City is an interesting place to visit if one is into weird stuff. It's an old abandoned area that was once a military base that people have turned into a very unplanned squatter community. It's notable because there are some impressive community art pieces.

The place has managed to avoid accumulating the truly destructive squatter elements (e.g people with severe mental illness or substance abuse problems,though meth is a problem) because it is remote, there are no services, and it is dangerously hot during the summer time. Thus, it's pretty hard to live there without at least a modest RV and some planning, which has made it a bit more inviting and interesting than the usual homeless encampment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_City,_California

Slab City is featured in the movie Into The Wild. The movie sends you through many of these out of the way places on Chris’s journey through the North American West.

With Starlink you will be able to have a few real cyberpunk squatters out there. Plenty of solar power too.

$100 bucks a month and 100W power usage might keep it out of most people's hands for a while.

That's $200 worth of solar panels? If Starlink and food is your only expense...

Too bad they don't have Starlink, but for water and food.

My irrational hope is that parent is a GM executive, dragging their family along to the site of future business deals.

Like Ludendorff holidaying covertly to the fortifications at Liège in Belgium prior to World War 1.

Kids sour faced in the back seats wishing you worked at Disney.

My big question is, how are there still fish living there to die? I would have thought they would have died out years ago.

Life... uh... finds a way

Then why did they die?

There are fish that can survive various levels of salt and other conditions. But if the conditions were right for them to survive, reproduce, etc, then why suddenly die? It seems like there could be a cycle since other said they experienced the same die off, but then what is the cause of the cycle and how do any survive to create the carcasses for the next die-off?

The fish and bird population has been in continuous decline. The lake used to get enough freshwater replenishment to maintain a relatively balanced salinity level and saltwater ecosystem. Now, the salinity is continuously increasing over time. The most hearty specimens are able to survive and reproduce, but much of the wildlife has died out. Large amounts of biomass soak in the saline solution, becoming pickled fish and birds, adding to the scent that others have commented on.

Collapse is not instantaneous. Nor is it all-encompassing. Even left unchecked for another 100 years, you would still find some forms of life present, but not the ones you see today.

The salinity of the Salton Sea is very high. All of the fish that were introduced have died except for tilapia and the desert pupfish. They are the only fish that can tolerate the high salt levels.

https://speciesfishing.com/fishing-the-salton-sea/

There are periodic mass die offs. The most common is because of botulism.

Avian botulism, caused by bacteria, usually occurs in the spring time when the winds are very strong and push all of the old, deoxygenated water from the bottom of the Salton Sea to the top, depleting the oxygen available for the fish, causing them to die. As the fish die, the birds eat them, and get sick from contracting the bacteria. The birds then die and get feasted on by maggots which then infect birds feasting on the maggots. This can result in massive bird mortality. The species most affected by avian botulism are waterfowl and shorebirds.

https://wildlife.ca.gov/Regions/6/Salton-Sea-Birds

Thanks!

It's boom and bust cycles. Big booms of fish when the conditions are right and the food is plentiful; big die-offs when the conditions swing the other way. There's always been enough fish that survive the bad times to spark the next boom.

The documentary talks about this. The salton sea has one of the world's largest tilapia populations. Mass die offs occur, and the dead fish acts as fertilizer. This causes algae blooms to form, which provides an ample food source for the tilapia, and they have a population explosion, rinse and repeat. That said, it sounds like the water is getting saltier all the time, so eventually, it will just be a dead sea if things continue the way they are going.

Sounds like a machine to evolve salt and toxicity resistant super tilapia.

“The tilapia raised on Mars were taken from the Salton Sea population…”

These are my favourite dates: https://www.chinaranch.com/

In Tecopa (sorta) - right next to Death Valley.

Wow that font

It is free to watch (legitimately) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TjGAWxL23c

It's a pretty unique/interesting watch.

Everyone else uses it as a cautionary tale...except your dog!

Good work dad. One day they will appreciate it more.

You should have added slab city to the itinerary.

I drove around the Salton Sea, but didn’t know the history. Every little “town” around it was dead (although there were signs of restoration in progress). It’s an amazing American post-apocalypse experience, mad max in America style.

Huh. I’ve been to Salton Sea a couple times and always really enjoy it. Nice place to kayak, the mist over the sea with the surrounding mountains makes it very picturesque the right time of day, and there aren’t motorboats flying by every second blasting music like you get with most lakes open to boating in SoCal.

I’ve only been in winter, which I’m sure helps. I certainly wouldn’t want to go in >100 degree heat.

I've been there once. It's a super weird place. I stopped by Salton City on the west side of the lake (https://goo.gl/maps/ksWdbiRFfpnUBE6X8). The town has 50% nice-ish, occupied homes & 50% derelict buildings that looked like dilapidated crack houses. The shore was super stinky, covered with dead fish (tilapia I assume) & the smell you'd expect to go with it.

The Salton sea is just the latest iteration of the cycle of freshwater lakes[1] that form, then dry up in that location in the Colorado River delta. The fact that a canal cut formed the latest one does not distinguish it much from the several version over the last few thousand years of natural formations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Cahuilla

"Even if they do it terribly, I doubt they'll make anything worse."

You can always make things worse.

So I hope this will not be an excuse to be even more careless with the exploitation, even though more lithium is beneficial, too.

This quick video on the Salton Sea is very informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCYcSbCR6z4

Totally agree. It's so bad out there. What's the worst they can do?!

Normally I would be against a proposal like this. However looking at the history and state of the Salton sea - we cannot make it any worse. This looks like a win-win situation.

this is bad news as it is close to palm springs, and anything like this should be kept out of the LA area.

One thing to note - the headline of the article itself is incorrect. It says "GM Will Suck Lithium From the Salton Sea" In fact the lithium is being extracted from brine thousands of feet below the Salton Sea, as is stated in the article itself. Also GM is not doing the work, they signed an agreement with another company that is actually doing it. HN reworded headline is better.

On paper these projects are proposing to improve the salinity of the water in the sea, as the plan is to release the treated brine/water to the lake.

The article says "The brine, after lithium extraction, is returned to the geothermal reservoir deep within the earth.”

So doesn't sound like there's a desalinization story here.

I find that area geologically fascinating. It's one of the few above-water rift zones in the world. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Trough the sediment fills it in as quickly as it sinks, so you have sediment in some areas going down 20,000 feet.

The earthquakes seem to come in swarms out there, which I think is a result of the pulling apart. In a thrust fault or strike-slip fault, you have a release of energy and while the stress is transferred somewhere else, that seems to be the end of the movement. When you pull two plates apart, you create a gap and the stuff above it sort of settles down into the gap, probably causing the successive earthquakes as it all settles into the new position.

I really wish we had a canal to the Salton Sea. Having a new inland port and a source of fresher water would dramatically change the area.

As a former geologist, it’s always awesome to see some one interested in geology.

If you’re into infill from normal faulting, you might like reading up on the US Basin and Range—that’s all extension and basin fill

Geology is absolutely fascinating! I'm really amazed at far geologists have progressed in establishing the history of our planet. I have to thank Nick Zentner's YouTube videos(https://www.youtube.com/user/GeologyNick) for getting me into geology. He has a very approachable style for non-geologists.

I've been looking at the geology of Nevada more since the Mina, NV earthquake storm started(2020? I forget). Geologic activity is such a slow process so it's great when you can see a burst of activity like that. I doubt I'll live long enough to see it, but I'm hoping I can see the emergence of a new volcanic cone in the western NV/eastern CA region.

If you’re interested in this stuff I definitely recommend checking out ‘Annals of the Former World’ if you haven’t already. I have no geology background but found it utterly riveting

https://www.amazon.com/Annals-Former-World-John-McPhee/dp/03...

The Salton Sea area also has volcanism! There's an island there with obsidian, as well as active surface geothermal features (mud volcanoes) that are likely driven by deeper magma.

Lithium battery recycling of high efficiency requres a known feed of one type of battery, Most scrap batteries with a mixture of assorted chemistry laptop batteries in small quantities can not optimize. Big players sort all their cells into knows metals/chemistry etc. for best recovery Tesla and other car makers will present a known consistent feed of old batteries and will be able to reclaim 95%++ of the battery metal content. The recycle field is getting crowded, but car makers have the high card as they can make their own recycling system in house. I bet Panasonic and LG have recycling - they will not leave that $$ on the table.

By grinding up a wide enough variety of batteries you can get a pretty consistent mix. You then smelt it to metal as if it were ore.

The waste gasses are the most expensive to treat properly.

Sure, some catch fire, but most smelters are kinda fireproof already...

You can grind and smelt, risky as it is unless nitrogen blanketed? however this presents you with a hard to resolve mixture - usually the cheapest components are sacrificed for the Ni, Co and Li = even then it is a nuisance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbkhXAP1EQE

Interesting video, the guy talks about "hydro metallurgical processing batteries" but I wonder how much these processes (grind up in a vacuum, boil off/condense electrolytes, separate out plastics/etc and ground into black mask, acid bath of black mask and separate out into NiSO4, CoSO4, Li2SO4, etc) cost compared to typical mining operations?

Hydrometallurgical processes are water based processes where you react the digested battery liquid with other liquids to get a react product that can be dealt with by filtering. It is a complex, often proprietary process, changing Ph etc, and while patented it still has a lot of black art. The source rock ores, pegmatitees, of Li are low grade with many other mineral species.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegmatite Like a bag of nuts and bolts

> It is a complex, often proprietary process, changing Ph etc, and while patented it still has a lot of black art.

Yeah that's what I figured, but doesn't really tell me about the costs vs mining (which will be hard to tell from the outside because of the above) :/

There are thousands of pegmatite deposits, with a mixed bag of nuts (associated minerals), each one needs to ba assessed as to extractable grade, the size of the deposit, the location, the environment etc. You do not get a pure Li ore body - it burns in air = you get a deposit of 2-3% Li with a mixed..... So lithium carbonate is worth about $15 per kilogram of the hydrated carbonate. LiCO3.2H2O = how it is used industrially with further processing. This can be followed here. https://www.pwc.com/ca/en/industries/mining/publications/lit...

https://www.fastmarkets.com/commodities/industrial-minerals/...

Thanks, the second link looks very helpful and gave me further ideas on how to try to work backwards to get an idea of the recycling processing costs: find spot prices of raw/intermediates that come from the process produced by companies with the black box recycling processes while trying to find those companies volume sold/processed over time (ideally they would process more when the underlying market is more expensive).

The only way is to read the quarterly MD&A and F/S from the various mining companies. The management discussion and analysis will give greater details, and the Financial Statements show the cash flows. A listed companies must file them quarterly and there is an annual report - all of which are audited.

Also worth noting is that the entire automotive industry has a complete system for capturing functional enough used parts -- the core charge when buying a new part. Even shade tree mechanics feed into recycling those things to be bored out, sleeved and resold to a new person. I would expect nothing less of something with such high intrinsic material value.

> California Energy Commission’s estimate that the Salton Sea area could produce 600,000 tons of lithium per year, which is amazing since the entire world’s industry produced a mere 85,000 tons of lithium in all of 2019.

This seems suspiciously high. Even 60,000 tons would almost double the global supply. I would be surprised if this turns out to be accurate.

“Could” and “will do so very shortly” aren’t mutually exclusive.

Lithium is not actually rare. I think this is a big source of continuing confusion in discussions on battery-electric electric vehicles (of all types: bikes, cars, trucks, buses, vans, airplanes, ships, trains, etc) and renewable energy (grid storage).

Production capacity equals demand, roughly. That should not be surprising as production capacity costs money and you don't invest in more production capacity than you have demand. Proven reserves ALSO are some fairly low multiple of demand, for related reasons.

Cobalt however.... To a lesser degree Nickel is being stressed as well.

It's why LFP chemistry is so important. If that can handle mainstream use cases (commuter cars, medium range busses/trucking, etc) then BEV scaling to the entire economy becomes a lot more feasible.

LFP is well suited for stationary applications, since its energy density isn't as high as LiIon. I know Tesla uses it in some of their non-US EVs, but those are pretty range limited. The battery system on my house uses LFP cells. They're also extremely thermally stable, and don't require any cooling systems.

LFP's lower energy density is at least partially made up for by its higher packing density. Other Li-ion chemistries need "firewalls" to prevent catastrophic propagation of thermal failure, but LFP cells can be packed tightly without such barriers.

It’s fine for 250 miles range entry level electric cars. That’s equivalent to top of the line 5-10 years ago. Barely qualifies for “pretty range limited.”

That's fair. I don't think there are yet entry level (sub $20k) 250 mile EVs in the US yet are there?

No, but I think an LFP battery could help enable one.

It’s 20,000 tons in stage 1 which is still huge.

https://investingnews.com/company-profiles/controlled-therma...

Hell’s Kitchen is expected to have a minimum 30 year life. Stage 1 of production is slated to begin in 2023, with a 20,000 tonnes per annum lithium hydroxide facility along with the generation of 49.9 megawatts of renewable energy from the integrated geothermal power plant.

And there is about 99% change they will not reach that. The amount of Lithium projects that have not reached there targets in the last decade is amazing. Even the expansion plans of the 'big' lithium producers have been massively delayed.

There has never been a single geothermal lithium project that was actually successful.

yeah but for how long? 10 years? 30? 1?

The estimated reserves in SSGF(salton sea geothermal field) is 15 million metric tones[1].

Assuming the estimates are somewhat reliable at their projected annual draw it is 30 years worth. It is also to be noted that neither is the annual global demand close to that yet nor is the technology mature enough to extract that quantum yet so probably 50-60 years actual life time of the field which is not atypical for fields for other resources.

Also estimate is fore 600,000 tones of lithium carbonate not pure lithium.

[1] https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/08/05/geothermal-brines-coul...

A nice little reserve then!

Close - 2023

https://investingnews.com/company-profiles/controlled-therma...

Controlled Thermal Resources anticipates commencement of commercial production at Hell’s Kitchen in 2023. The production of geothermal power at Hell’s Kitchen provides CTR the ability to participate in California’s growing renewable energy market. In January 2020, CTR announced it had entered into a 25 year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Imperial Irrigation District (IID), the largest irrigation district in North America and the sixth-largest electrical utility in California.

With the assistance of its project engineering partner Hatch Ltd., Controlled Thermal Resources completed its Canadian National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101) Technical Report, and the accompanying Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA). CTR has initiated a Prefeasibility Study (PFS) and commenced well pad construction in anticipation of drilling its first two geothermal wells.

The report says 600,000 tons lithium carbonate [1] per year.

Given that Li(2)CO(3) is the molecular structure of lithium carbonate and 14:12:48 is the molar mass ratio. Therefore there is no more than 1/5 of that in actual lithium so about 120,000 tones.

Still larger than today's world consumption but not as unrelastically high I guess.

[1] https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/08/05/geothermal-brines-coul...

This explains why later in the article it says the mine could produce 40% of the world’s lithium.

This podcast episode, “The white gold rush” by The Slow Newscast, goes into depth on the recent history of the lake and the community of the Salton Sea — https://overcast.fm/+oXTWZbQac

Veritasium did an excellent video on the history of the salton sea, here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OqrZG-EBaQ

that's fine with me.. the imperial valley is a man made cluster f anyways.. It's a naturally desert environment with very little redeemable qualities, other than mineral extraction.

This Drainage Basin map (1943) seems to explain the salt and alkaline lakes around the world, like Salton Sea in CA, but I'd love to know more.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oldmaps/comments/d0ilnn/world_drain...

600,000 tonnes a year. Is that too optimistic ?

Likely this will be a bad development for the community at Slab City.

There should be plenty of copper wiring available at the build sites.

I was there recently to see Salvation Mountain. It's been taken over by a bunch of acid casualties who have posted 'no picture' signs. A bunch of them came running towards me when I got out of the car to take a picture. I fully expected to hear bullets whizzing by my head as I got back in the car and drove off.

Wonder if this is because they don't want to be photographed or if they want to extract money out of the situation.

I didn't stick around to find out and they weren't in a talkative mood. It was like an attack by zombies. Slab City is romanticized on the internet, but it looks to me like a dumping ground for humans who have been run out of every town they tried to live in.

They claim to own the photons reflecting off Salvation Mtn?

How recently? I was there in December and it wasn't like that at all.

This was Spring 2020. It could have been they were afraid of tourists bring in Covid.

maybe if you walk into a community and immediately disrespect their rules you shouldn't expect a particularly warm welcome

They have no right to disallow photos. Salvation Mountain wasn't built by them and has become an artwork that belongs to all.

never said anything about rights. but it sounds like came in with an attitude of condescension, disrespect, and antagonism. i don't see why you'd expect them to respond with good will

> with an attitude of condescension, disrespect, and antagonism

I came in with a an attitude of seeing something interesting, as featured in several internet documentaries. I had no communication with anyone. I stopped, opened the door of my car, stood up, and took a picture: https://imgur.com/NyzDKgJ

Then they came out walking quickly towards me in a threatening manner. I had hoped to actually walk around the artwork, but they had posted no photo and keep out signs. My attitude didn't sour until after I felt threatened and feared that I would get shot.

What possessed you to go in and take photos after you saw the no photo and keep out signs?

Was it entitlement? It sounds like entitlement.

They literally are entitled to be there (public land) and to take photos (of literally anything visible from public spaces).

The inappropriate entitlement is from whomever put up those signs and harasses people when they come near.

Everybody missed the part where this was in the Spring of 2020 huh.

Ok. So be it.

They have every right to post no pictures signs, walk/run up to you and tell not to take photos, and not shoot at you. And you've got a right to ignore all that and take photos. Free Country™!

The people who hang out there change all the time

Weird. About two months ago I was browsing around google earth in california when i came across a weird looking lake called salton sea. I read the wikipedia article and was astonished as to how much a disaster it is.

Doesn't it seem like a reasonable idea to tie lithium extraction to the environmental remediation of the Salton sea?

Why not switch to sodium-ion?

There’s few reasons not to, and eventually I think people will realize this.

I think it's because sodium ions are larger, so they diffuse more slowly in materials. But maybe that doesn't matter as much for longer duration stationary batteries where lower power density is tolerable.

Because making it work is difficult and energy density is worse. But sodium-ion will eventually be part of the story. However it will not be 'switching' both will need to be growing fast at the same time.

I think we should just nuke a path between the Salton Sea and the Pacific. That would clean things up right up.

“We fucked up trying to make canals in the first place. Let’s do it again to fix things, we’re so good at anticipating consequences”

Absolutely. Too much never really achieves greatness, but way too much is just perfect. Let's nuke the canal a kilometer deep from the Salton Sea to the Pacific.

The southwest has always been home to such largesse. Oceans of sand, no one to say no.

Native Americans built canals throughout the desert southwest, some of them hundreds of miles long, a thousand years before Christoforo Columbo saw his first manatee.

Presuming we have 100% oil-powered car and jet transit vs 100% electric (assuming electric planes are developed), which one is worse for the environment? Oil or lithium?

Assume transportation levels remain constant or continue to grow.

What's the cost of the entire lifecycle? Mining/extraction, carbon emissions, recycling (or not), etc.

Honest question.

I'm coming from a disposition where it seems like lithium will be just as bad or worse from a mining and remediation perspective, worse from a recycling perspective, but better for carbon sequestration assuming we get power from solar, wind, nuclear, etc. and not coal. It seems like electric will also increase cardiovascular and pulmonary health since many studies link air quality to endothelial aging.

Overall, I'm curious if the trade-off are worth it.

I'm also interested in the geopolitical angle.

The US has energy on lock under the old regime, but energy alternatives seem as though they'll favor Europe and China (China especially for lithium), but not the oil powers. It also de-risks dependence on oil and coal for many countries that are net importers. Is this correct? How (or will?) a switch to electric transportation change the geopolitical world? Substantially?

Edit: downvoted for questions.

Right now carbon dioxide caused warming is more serious threat than a few more toxic metals. Sunlight is basically free money raining down all the time.

Also, by definition silicon (panels) and lithium (batteries) are super common elements. Not going to be hard to find. Unlike oil, you can use the solar panels to fab more solar panels, because of the sun’s input. You can’t use coal to make more coal. The solar inputs are long since gone.

So you believe that carbon dioxide -- which will be used by plants to generate oxygen -- is a greater threat to the environment than toxic metals, which will take millions of years to dissipate? Something seems off...

Yes, CO2 is currently a much larger threat.

Negative.

Plants don't absorb CO2 to get oxygen, they absorb it to get carbon.

And what do you think happens to the plants afterwards? Do they store the carbon forever? What happens when they die?

He didn't say "get" oxygen. He said make oxygen. Yeah plants do ingest CO2 + H2O to make oxygen via photosynthesis. Oxygen is arguably a more toxic gas than CO2. It causes fires and oxidation. Dose make the poison. All aerobic metabolising organism exhale CO2. They have been for billions of years. The sky hasn't fallen. Some how I doubt it will from one species of animal burning fossils for a few tens of decades.

First of all, the purpose of photosynthesis is primarily for obtaining energy via carbon. Oxygen by itself is no use. Secondly, not all of the oxygen that a plant uses comes from photosynthesis. Some of it can be absorbed from water in the roots, and some is absorbed from the air itself between cells. The amount varies from species to species.

More importantly, you've completely missed the bigger point. Carbon has been sequestered from the atmosphere over millions of years. Now we are releasing that carbon at a high rate over a few decades. The balance is being changed at an extremely fast rate, in a blink of a geological eye.

So.... the OP originally tried to justify fossil fuels on the basis that plants will just absorb it. Can you answer my question to them? Where does that carbon go once a plant has absorbed it?

Ok, so let me cut to the chase. Plants store the carbon. Plants eventually die. Carbon is mostly released back into the atmosphere either indirectly or directly. So increased plant sequestration is only a temporarily store, it can't help us fix the carbon issue permanently.

The toxic metals don't spread through the air.

Probably downvoted because there are a plethora of sources out there for you to easily do your own checking on.

- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/climate/electric-vehicles...

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/05/20/are-el...

- https://www.wsj.com/graphics/are-electric-cars-really-better...

There may be some articles from not as reputable sources that may find the answer to be a little more controversial... The TL;DR is generally: yes... electric is always greener, it's just a matter of how much. As they become more and more sustainably powered, the difference increases.

Also, this line of “EVs are worse for the environment because of coal powered grids” is literally oil industry propaganda.

It depends, if all of the energy you use to charge your car is produced in states like Wyoming or West Virginia (both of which export several times more electricity than they consume) driving a hybrid or any small/efficient IC car is definitely better.

I think banning coal is something that we should definitely do before even considering banning IC cars…

According the the study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an EV powered by 100% coal produces about the same CO2 as a 50mpg ICE car. Very few grids are that dirty. Once you get out of those areas, the EV is much cleaner.

Even West Virginia isn’t 100% coal fired, most states are far cleaner than a hypothetical 100% coal fired grid.

It’s not 100% but not that far off https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WV#tabs-4 and it exports enough energy to fully power Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey (just an example for scale, all of those states produce most of their energy locally). Not trying to imply that we shouldn’t replace IC as well, but getting rid of coal powered plants seems like fairly low hanging fruit to me.

A few years ago I would have been inclined to say that economics would kill coal. Now it’s fairly obvious that coal lives due to political reasons despite it being an economic loser. It seems to me that it will be necessary to ban coal and force power plants to decommission their coal fired plants.

Yeah but kicking out on its way out or some other low hanging fruit we can all mostly agree on doesn't get you brownie points (if you're a policy maker) or virtue points (if you're an internet commenter). Hence why everyone wants to push for extremist stuff that we know will upend the economy if done own and we don't know won't upend the economy if done 5/10/20yr from now.

Battery powered long distance flight is unlikely because gasoline/kerosene has 5 times the weight energy density of lithium ion. Short haul flights may be viable. Hydrogen fuel cell planes even better because hydrogen has 3 times the weight energy density of jet fuel and 15 times lithium batteries.

Long-haul flights work because burning the fuel means that it’s no longer weight being carried. In terms of energy to carried weight ratio, it’s basically infinite.

What you may see are efforts to convert short-haul flights to electricity where the limited range is less of an issue.

Hydrogen is a non starter because of the need for heavy tanks no?

Batteries are sealed contained

Right. Liquid hydrogen is fluffy. Energy density by volume is 4 times lower than that of jet fuel.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210401-the-worlds-first...

This is not true. It just requires rethinking the whole design of a plane. Density of energy is not everything.

Batteries for example can be made structural, so they actually replace part of the weight of a plane, while kerosene has to be carried like cargo. ICE engines are far less efficient too. And the TWR of electric engines is better too. That again reduced the structural loads.

Electric engines also don't need to oxygen and can potentially fly much higher, where there is less air resistance.

Even if you can't get as far, the price to operate these planes will be so much lower, that for the waste majority of the market they will simply be cheaper. Maybe more trips with multiple stops.

Maybe the very longest flights would still be out of reach with good lithium-sulfer batteries but I suspect at that point those flights will be economically not tenable anymore.

There is only very little lithium in "lithium" batteries (1-10%). Batteries last a long time and even when they've lost a lot of capacity they are still usable in cheap used cars and can be repurposed as stationary energy storage.

You have to be running 100% coal power plants before EVs are worse for the environment. For a pure oil fired power grid, which does not exist anywhere in America, EVs would win hands down. Once you get to a mix of natural gas, coal, and renewables, which is actually what the US grid looks like then EVs are massively better than gasoline cars.

Internal combustion engines are actually very efficient.

Burning gasoline in a power plant produces 2.13 pounds of CO2 per kWh, Model 3 LR consumes 16 kWh per 100km, so 34.08lb of CO2. A car consuming 7 liters of gas per 100km would emit 35lb of CO2. I assume energy loss from plant to battery is not insignificant so the IC should be better if the power grid is 100% petroleum (for coal it should be 2x worse).

Sources:

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/info-tools/One%20tab...

Worth noting that your CO2 emission value for gasoline powered vehicles is tailpipe emissions, the total value (well to wheels) should be very roughly 25% higher.

I don't know exactly what CO2 production your power plant number includes.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.6b02819#tbl1

Thanks just wanted to make a rough approximation since a purely coal/petrol network is not realistic anyway.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/glossary/index.php?id=Net%20genera...

I believe it’s electricity generated at the plant, so we should add 5-15% for transmission losses and 8-20% depending on charger efficiency.

Assuming 5% transmission and 10% charging loss using the well-to-wheel figures you posted charging in a 100% coal grid should be equivalent to and around 5.7l/100km / 41mpg IC car.

If you use the 16kWh per 100km numbers you provided perhaps. This number however is wrong. The official EPA estimate for the Model 3 is 14.88kWh, not 16kWh per 100km.

Real world testing yields an even lower value of 12kWh.

https://thedriven.io/2020/10/20/model-3-achieves-record-low-...

All the reports I’ve seen show that, from a CO2 standpoint, an EV powered 100% by coal still produced less CO2 than gasoline even though there is additional CO2 produced during the battery production. It takes about 14K miles for an EV to reach the point in its lifetime where it is producing less CO2 overall than a gasoline car. After that, it’s all upside. EVen then most electric grids are not so dirty and include a mix of coal, oil, gas, hydro, solar and wind with the renewable percentage increasing.

Genuine question from someone who's a big fan of Teslas. Almost all the EV benefits seem to come from the power source. But I don't see much on addressing the actual battery manufacturing process. The cobalt being used in the batteries seems to be coming from unethical sources using child and slave labour practices in Congo:

> Cobalt has also been called the “blood diamond of batteries.” More than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt is produced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and 15 to 30 percent of the Congolese cobalt is produced by artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). For years, human rights groups have documented severe human rights issues in mining operations. These human rights risks are particularly high in artisanal mines in the DRC, a country weakened by violent ethnic conflict, Ebola, and high levels of corruption. Child labor, fatal accidents, and violent clashes between artisanal miners and security personnel of large mining firms are recurrent.

> According to recent projections by the World Economic Forum’s Global Battery Alliance, the demand for cobalt for use in batteries will grow fourfold in 2030 as a result of this electric vehicle boom.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/05/cutting-...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelposner/2020/10/07/how-te...

https://www.cfr.org/blog/why-cobalt-mining-drc-needs-urgent-...

So my questions are:

1. Are we sure this is the right move since at least when it comes to oil, we can mostly ensure the people working in oil fields are adults who are paid very well - especially as we become independent of foreign oil. For cobalt, we can't do that so far?

2. Has anyone done a full analysis of the side effects of cobalt, lithium and other extractions on environment from start (mining) all the way to finish (when an EV breaks down / junkyard etc?)

While current non-LFP Tesla batteries still have cobalt, I don't think any of Tesla's newer battery designs contain it. Seems like they're completely phasing out use of it.

Tesla is also developing environmentally friendly ways to extract lithium, see a recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27853978

The results remain to be seen, I hope they're going to be successful reducing their environmental impact.

It’s roughly comparable for extraction cost for comparable weight: large variation depending on circumstances, etc. but you need 63 kg of Lithium for a Telsa that should drive a million miles. You’d need 50 thousand gallons of gas (200,000 L or 160 tons) to cover the same distance. So about three thousands times worst. The lifecycle balance isn’t something you can draw at scale on a high-definition screen and have the electric impact occupy more than a pixel or two.

Same for Cobalt: it used to be used to make batteries, so there are worrisome stories but the metal is also something that refineries put in gas so… kinda the same: you are comparing a component with a consumable.

Finally, you mention China, or you could have asked about Chile to, for Lithium. Neither are really the largest producers. They sure sound politically scary but it’s harder to paint Australia has a dangerous dictature. Scary countries aren’t the biggest marginal plan if prices go up: the reserves in Canada and USA are more promising.

So yeah: shifting to those technologies will force a big geopolitical change and the executives at fossil fuel companies who boasted being accused of war crimes as a sign of commitment a sure way to advance their careers in front of large group including me (sic) might have a bit of a reckoning. I’ll let you guess which war zone, environmental disaster there were talking so causally about, because they are so many — hint: they were also accused of genocide there; except that’s not really a helpful hint, is it? The oil barons in the Gulf who routinely use slavery and prostitue girls as young as 7 or 8, both in broad daylight, might have to change their lifestyle too.

Some people think that having a CEO posting weird meme on twitter, or advocating for long shift to end [see paragraph above] is unacceptable. Sure, it’s improvable as far as leadership goes, but… I like to ask: what’s the alternative? If we don’t have that, what do we have? In my case, it’s the eyes of a little girl, dragged through the hall of a luxurious hotel in Dubai. The documentarian who filmed and commented that scene had no doubt what was happening, or who paid for it: he did, every time he filled his tank.

> So yeah: shifting to those technologies will force a big geopolitical change and the executives at fossil fuel companies who boasted being accused of war crimes as a sign of commitment a sure way to advance their careers in front of large group including me (sic) might have a bit of a reckoning. I’ll let you guess which war zone, environmental disaster there were talking so causally about, because they are so many — hint: they were also accused of genocide there; except that’s not really a helpful hint, is it? The oil barons in the Gulf who routinely use slavery and prostitue girls as young as 7 or 8, both in broad daylight, might have to change their lifestyle too.

One also has to consider that existing structure of the global financial system, that finances a lot of these operations and has a lot of value locked up in them long term, has less incentive to pursue such initiatives to the degree that they can hedge the downside risks of the long term losses on those assets onto somebody else while building out new renewable infrastructure.

Isn’t the answer in the fact that it’s recyclable. Not just the fact that you can recycle an old lithium battery into a new one. But that you can recharge it for 8+ years.

You don’t even need to do the math: if you invented an oil car that you filled up with 800kg of oil once and it ran for 8 years. It’s clearly an improvement.

> What's the cost of the entire lifecycle? Mining/extraction, carbon emissions, recycling (or not), etc.

It is not very high. Specially now that there is series effort going into lithium production and the whole supply chain of batteries. Much more local production.

In fact, in examples like this lithium production is not harmful at all. At worst its as bad as mining anything else. At best its a totally brine process where you are just extracting a little bit of salt from geological brine and pump it right back.

> worse from a recycling perspective

Worse then gasoline that gets burned up? How? The opposite is true, currently almost all lithium batteries are recycled or are simply going to secondary uses.

Over the long term all major players have recycling efforts going on, because once you have series amounts of batteries reaching end of life, it simply makes sense to recycle as it will be cheaper then mining new.

The air quality around some chemical plant is one thing, even under worse assumptions, its a million times better then driving gasoline cars threw cities where people actually live.

> Is this correct? How (or will?) a switch to electric transportation change the geopolitical world? Substantially?

All the materials needed for batteries exist in pretty much all continents. All the continents have the knowledge to produce all the required materials. Even if now it often happens in China. It will mean a major lost of importance for the big oil states. Other then that not much will change.

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