Ask HN: Is Lithium a Limited Resource? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Lithium a Limited Resource?

14 pointsedmcnulty10110 comments

From what I've read, lithium batteries have a limited life span and eventually need replacing.

I'm noticing Tesla's and other EVs are selling out as fast as they can make them.

I've been wondering: are we trading out oil as a finite resource for lithium?

There is already a circular economy for cars: they get crushed and the metal is recycled.

The same is going to happen for EV batteries in the next decade, they will use either hydro or pyrometallurgy to get lithium and other metals out.

Very few of the known lithium reserves are developed. More of those will be developed in the next decade. We are still at the point where people will find more resources when they try harder. Lithium is earlier in the game than conventional oil.

Remember all the talk about Hubbert’s peak circa 2000? They perfected hydro fracking and discovered enough tight gas and oil to completely change the market. Resource depletion is a real problem but so far solutions have outrun problems.

Lithium recycling DOES NOT exist in practice at the moment. Pilot projects exist but nothing at volume. It's 0% effectively.

There is excellent lead battery recycling of lead - >99%.

So much so that there are no primary lead smelters left in the US (that relatively small amount in imported).

Lithium batteries don't use up lithium. After its lifespan, the lithium is still there, so the battery will (hopefully) be sent to a recycling facility where the lithium is recovered and used to build a new battery.

In that sense lithium is totally unlike oil.

It was only recently I learned that “recyclable” meant “theoretically can be recycled”, not that there’s an existing process or, more importantly, economy. Apparently there isn’t much incentive to extract metals from batteries as is - I don’t know how costs compare to extracting from spent batteries vs ore, but only 3-5% of Lithium batteries are currently recycled (for the nickel and cobalt more than the lithium), the rest, presumably, is landfilled.

so it may surprise others that recycling electric car batteries is still an active research area:

https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re...

Alongside lithium, the same is true of any plastic materials and most of the electrolytes. Ironically, the rapidly reduction in battery costs is make this problem harder, as there are fewer high-value components worth recycling.

There is a lot of lithium in the ground so I don’t think we’ll run out, but I do wonder if supply will keep up with demand. A Tesla in every driveway perhaps is OK, but I wonder what happens when power grids and 18 wheelers want to buy batteries too.

Edit: cobalt and nickel are the pricier elements. Going from memory, cobalt is used to stabilize the battery chemistry, allowing it to charge/discharge at higher rates and extending its useful life. Finding a balance between low cost chemistry and high performance batteries is the subject of much penny pinching.

"Today, the data shows a looming mismatch between the world’s strengthened climate ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to realising those ambitions." [1]

There is a lot of lithium out there, but other minerals/metals will likely be limiting factors and the metals used in batteries will be determined by price availability. For example, nickel is better than cobalt from an energy density and weight perspective, but there needs to be a 19X increase in nickel mining to have enough for EV+stainless steel use and most of the easy nickel has already been mined. There are plenty of rare earth minerals out there, but they are extremely dirty to produce, and so very few places produce them.

Even with mining though, EVs are more efficient for the one time mining of the metals, vs the constant life time use of "mining" of fossil fuels to power ICE engines. Also, the recycling aspect is pretty positive too. Once enough metals are mined for all cars to transitions, we should be able to survive mostly off of recycling, with smaller amounts freshly mined.

That is why Elon is out there asking mining companies to "please mine more nickel," because he knows about the looming shortages. That is why they are using iron cathodes in Model 3 and stationary storage. See the article, "All the mines Tesla needs to build 20 million cars a year" [2].

An example of recycling is with aluminum, where b/c of prolific recycling, we only have to mine 10% or so each year's needs to keep up with demand. We need to figure out how to sustainably extract the needed quantities of these important minerals this century, which can then power humanity's needs almost indefinitely. This is one of the great challenges of this century.

[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in... [2] https://www.mining.com/all-the-mines-tesla-needs-to-build-20...

Lithium is an element. Functionally, it is limited. Theoretically, one could manufacture it through fusion.

Depends on demand. For EVs even at 10% of current numbers of cars, it's a limited resource.

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