r/Futurology • u/ToffeeFever • Sep 10 '23

Energy Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/lithium-discovery-in-us-volcano-could-be-biggest-deposit-ever-found/4018032.article
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u/DukeOfGeek Sep 10 '23

Nope just really common. A rise in demand has sparked a rise in prospecting.

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u/starBux_Barista Sep 10 '23

their is a Lithium gold rush in Nevada of prospectors going out and staking claims in BLM lands Hoping to strike it rich selling mining rights to mega corp miners in the future.....

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u/DukeOfGeek Sep 10 '23

Maybe. There is a lot of research going on with Zinc Ion and solid state battery tech, so I would be nervous about a lithium investment that had an ROI of greater than ten years.

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u/starBux_Barista Sep 10 '23

true, Fun fact Only 14.1% of Nevada is Private property.... the Rest is BLM, Federal lands and Naval bombing sites and area 51 type places... I have heard from friends that Geothermal testing is picking up as well in the hopes of becoming a large power generator for the state.

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u/DukeOfGeek Sep 10 '23

I really hope the things I'm reading about new geothermal plant tech are true.

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u/Aurum555 Sep 11 '23

Do you have any literature or articles you've seen that are particularly interesting? I haven't really seen anything new from that sector in a while

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u/TriPawedBork Sep 11 '23

Fracking for geothermal energy is interesting. On mobile, no links on hand.

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u/Aurum555 Sep 11 '23

Very cool, I'd be interested to see whether they have the same issues with localized seismic activity and sinkholes etc, but still could be very promising

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u/radicalelation Sep 11 '23

I would like to read these things too, please.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '23

Don't forget the Neil Breen film locations

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u/Micalas Sep 11 '23

I absolutely can't forget them.

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u/BlueSwordM Sep 11 '23

Solid state electrolytes can be used to build many battery types, and most of them are currently lithium ion based.

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u/DanFlashesSales Sep 23 '23

and solid state battery tech,

Don't most solid state batteries still use lithium?

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u/ACShooter3893 Dec 17 '23 edited Dec 17 '23

I wouldn’t be nervous because the next development of EV batteries will be solid states and those will actually require more lithium then the current lithium-ion batteries. And even if a new metal is discovered it would still take at another 8-10 years before the R&D advances on it and it’s commercially made. Battery producers/automakers aren’t just going to stop with Lithium on the drop of a hat and put all R&D in another metal. Especially since so much Lithium would have already been mined and processed into battery grade Li hydroxide or carbonate. They would keep using Lithium until the R&D advances enough to fully replace it. Lithium is here to stay and will be vital material in solid states for at least 10-15 years. And Thacker Pass has a shitload of it. 3rd largest deposit in the world. It’s fairly abundant but it’s expensive to mine it so it takes a lot of capital. And LAC doesnt have a ROI in ten years. At the moment they’re expected to start production of 40k tpa in 2026.

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u/ACShooter3893 Dec 17 '23

‘There are some technical challenges that zinc-based and other alternative batteries will need to overcome to make it to the grid, says Kara Rodby, technical principal at Volta Energy Technologies, a venture capital firm focused on energy storage technology. Zinc batteries have a relatively low efficiency—meaning more energy will be lost during charging and discharging than happens in lithium-ion cells. Zinc-halide batteries can also fall victim to unwanted chemical reactions that may shorten the batteries’ lifetime if they’re not managed.’

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/06/1079123/zinc-batteries-boost-eos/amp/

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u/MadDany94 Sep 11 '23

I know that battery tech is heavily funded, but is it so that people are starting to look for material deposits that eagerly?

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u/starBux_Barista Sep 11 '23

I know people who Wander the deserts of Nevada looking for Mineral specimens (example) Ebay listing . Some rare Prime specimens showing crystals will sell for upwards to $10,000 to the right collector....

With the Lithium mine claims, Once you stake the ground on BLM/federal land it's yours only to mine, so once they claim it they can decide what to do with it later.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '23

"BLM lands" ?

sorry, english isnt my first language, what does that mean?

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u/gameryamen Sep 11 '23

Bereau of Land Management

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u/iHateReddit_srsly Sep 11 '23

Black Lives Matter

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u/translinguistic Sep 10 '23

Interesting, I didn't know it was so (relatively) common. It looks like at least one estimation puts the amount of lithium in the earth's crust at being 1/10th of the amount of carbon in the crust, which is a huge amount

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust

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u/Aurum555 Sep 11 '23

It's the 3rd smallest atom wouldn't that make it one of the more prevalent just by function of being smaller than iron and being produced by main sequence stars as opposed to supernovae?

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u/NoThing2048 Sep 11 '23

High prices for commodities is often self-corrected by their high prices.

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u/ProtonPi314 Sep 11 '23

This exactly. Since the demand was low no one was really looking for it. But now that we are linking for it, we are finding more and more of it.

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u/ntb899 Sep 11 '23

does it need to be refined in a certain way to get it or just have people always just ignored those rocks in the past and never recorded them there since they werent valuable back then?