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]

... I literally said that it was energy intensive to go from ash to wood...

My whole point is that water is hydrogen after it is burned. It's actually very difficult to recover hydrogen and oxygen gas from water, not a matter of simply zapping a bucket with a bit of electricity.

[u/strcrssd → u/First_Working_7010]

Sorry, I misread and misunderstood you. Yes, water is oxidized hydrogen.

How is it difficult to recover though? Wiki says splitting water is 60-70% efficient with electrolysis. That's not perfect, but it's reasonable. Could you provide a better explanation other than that it's difficult, preferably with some links?

[u/First_Working_7010 → u/strcrssd]

Electrolysis is neither easy nor cheap. Certainly the capture, storage, and use of hydrogen afterward is complicated and expensive.

I don't know what to tell you. That's just common knowledge. Here's a report on pitfalls that Japan has faced in trying to develop and implement hydrogen technology.

https://www.renewable-ei.org/pdfdownload/activities/REI_JapanHydrogenStrategy_EN_202209.pdf

[u/strcrssd → u/First_Working_7010]

Oh yes, Hydrogen tech is extremely complex and being used incorrectly by transportation companies -- moving highly pressurized Hydrogen and dealing with all the pipes and fittings that requires coupled with Hydrogen's minute molecular size leads to all kinds of leaks. And that's not even taking into account hydrogen embrittlement.

That's not electrolysis though, it's failing to build a hydrogen economy.

Electrolysis itself is simple -- >~1.5v though water disassociates it.. It was initially performed in the 1700s with primitive batteries.

[u/First_Working_7010 → u/strcrssd]

The date that it was first done means nothing. It's expensive and complicated to do electrolysis at a scale that means anything. That why they haven't done it Japan, despite being obviously best situated for it.

[u/strcrssd → u/First_Working_7010]

You keep repeating that, but you're providing no supporting evidence. The fact that we know and have known how to do it for a very long time and that it's a common science experiment at the high school level speaks to it not being difficult. That's not industrial scale, but the principles are simple.

Electrolysis of water is simple. It's a solved bit of electrochemistry. It's not commonly done because: 1) There isn't high demand for hydrogen gas. 2) What demand exists is much more easily (cheaply) satiated by hydrocarbon methods, primarily steam reforming.

As for green hydrogen, water cracking, we have a working plant, in Japan. 10MW (solar) input, 1,200 Nm3 hydrogen output per hour (unknown to me the pressure).