Lithium discovery in U.S. volcano could be biggest deposit ever found

[u/Sort_of_Frightening]

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/lithium-discovery-in-us-volcano-could-be-biggest-deposit-ever-found/4018032.article

[u/First_Working_7010]

When a tree burns, it leaves ash. When hydrogen burns, it leaves water. Water being ash isn't a metaphor. It's literal. The ease of reversing the process has nothing to do with anything.

[u/legomann97 → u/First_Working_7010]

No no no, the argument you were trying to make is that you can make wood from ashes. That is blatantly false, it is impossible to reverse the reaction of burning wood. I accept your "water is hydrogen ash" argument because that kinda makes sense, but that's not the argument that was being made in the first place. Quit moving the goalposts.

[u/First_Working_7010 → u/legomann97]

Your reading comprehension is very poor. People are claiming that hydrogen is abundant on Earth because water is. That's idiotic. It's like claiming that wood is abundant because ash is. It's missing the point. Water is a molecule that contains hydrogen, but it is not hydrogen. It's the result of hydrogen burning.

[u/legomann97 → u/First_Working_7010]

Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension. Their point they were trying to make before I came in is that we have plenty of hydrogen that we can harvest in the form of water. Just need electricity to get it out. Simple. Then you decide to take it off the rails with this "wood ash" argument. Is water, by your definition of "ash," ash? Sure, maybe. That doesn't mean you can't get hydrogen from it with some extra energy. Saying that we don't have access to huge amounts of hydrogen in the form of water is absolutely false, because you can very easily split that molecule apart, with the result being hydrogen and oxygen gas.

Water contains hydrogen. Wood ash does not contain wood. That's the distinction here. You can directly harvest hydrogen from water through reversing the reaction. You can't do that with wood.