Chromium is 5 times more abundant than Lithium in earth crust (0.01% vs 0.002%). Better, but not that much ?
"Regular" sodium-ion batteries with prussian blue has, it seems, the great advantage of not using any scarce elements. It would be nice to have a comparison between this solid state chemistry and the regular one.
The Gibbs free energy of formation for chromium oxides and chromite is much more negative than for lithium-bearing minerals so Cr compounds are thermodynamically favored to precipitate out of melts and solutions, forming minerals with high concentrations that then get pushed up by other processes. Li+, with its lone valence electron, just doesn't form strong bonds or highly stable mineral phases in comparison. On top of that the diffusion coefficients for Cr species in magmas and rocks are generally orders of magnitude lower than for Li. Cr gets locked into crystal structures early and stays put, while Li keeps migrating and diffusing in the form of water soluble minerals. There's also a whole biogeochemical cycle for Cr involving microbes that can concentrate it in sediments.
I'm very optimistic because these solve so many battery issues at the same time, heat, rapid charge, sourcing.
Other industrial lithium intermediates are also toxic, as is the concentrated brine it’s often extracted from. Since it’s concentration is so low, most lithium extraction is pretty nasty.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/598320/mine-production-o...
I think if the price of chromium spiked enough, you'd just see more things move on to different materials. More aluminum, titanium, brass, bronze, etc. There are a lot of things made of stainless that don't necessarily have to be, simply because it's cheap and good enough.
But that's still only 7.2 million tons/year.
I feel like the where are we going to get the lithium and but what about the environmental costs arguments to be kind of weak when you look at actual production numbers and compare the costs with other resources we consume.
I recognized this as a paint color but didn't know this part. Fascinating substance, this was a very interesting Wikipedia rabbit hole:
Is it Trivalent, Hexavalent, or another form of Chromium?
Chromium > Precautions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium#Precautions
> [average Cr-6 levels in wells; public health] In October 2022, even though the EPA announced Cr-6 was likely carcinogenic if consumed in drinking water, The American Chemistry Council, an industry lobby group, disputed their finding. [18]
Hopefully it's dietary chromium, not Hexavalent chromium (Cr-6).
(My comment on this is unexplainedly downvoted to 0?)
Again, would battery recycling processes affect the molecular form of Chromium?